God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
by ruby gillis
Summary: Rhett Butler receives three mysterious visitors on Christmas eve...can any of them convince him to change his mind about Scarlett? An homage to A Christmas Carol. Not a companion piece to my other GWTW works.
1. Chapter One

_Author's note: I know it's probably been done before and that someone's writing a Scarlett Christmas Carol, but I couldn't resist casting Rhett in the role of Scrooge for myself. Hope you guys don't mind—and that you enjoy this! I'll try to be done in time for actual Christmas. Please read and review!_

Chapter One: Atlanta

If there was one thing Rhett Butler hated more than Christmas, it was Christmas in Atlanta.

He hated Atlanta any time of year, but at Christmastime it was insufferable. Starting on the first of December, the city seemed to become a caricature of itself. The streetlamps were ringed with holly and red bows, and gay tinsel wreaths appeared on every door. The air was full of woodsmoke and spices. Groups of carolers loitered in the square, hoping to inflict their cheer on innocent passersby—girls pinched color into their cheeks to match the ribbons pinned to their dresses—even old maids who should know better got into the spirit and behaved as though there was still hope for them. That hopefulness grated on Rhett's nerves—to pretend, for a few weeks, that anything in the world was possible, only to come crashing back to earth when the last present had been opened!

People were smiling as he stepped down from the train--"Season's greetings"--"Happy Yule!" and even one "Very merry new year to you, sir!" from the boy who had helped him with his trunk. Rhett had sneered at them. "Fiddle dee dee," he said, in a parody of someone he had once known. But then--_she_ had always loved Christmas. _Rhett, look at the candles in all the windows--the holly and the ivy--oh, I just love Christmastime, don't you_?

Perhaps that was why he hated it.

Had he _ever_ enjoyed the season? Rhett thought back--he did not think so. His boyhood in Charleston had been bleak. Oh, it had! His mother had tried, sometimes, to inject a bit of cheer into the grim, dark house by the Ashley River. But his father had always ruined things, somehow. His black rages took no note of bank holidays. Ah, well. Perhaps the old man had been right about something.

Because for his own part, Rhett Butler could see no good in any kind of Christmas cheer.

He had passed, on his way to Uncle Henry Hamilton's office this afternoon, Mrs. Dr. Meade herself, standing in the cold, her cheeks chapped to redness, holding a collection jar, soliciting—as she would put it, Rhett would have said it was more like browbeating—donations for the Confederate Ladies Fund for the Care of the Widows and Orphans of Our Glorious Cause. Nearly ten years after the end of the war, it seemed those widows and orphans were in just as dire straits as ever. Funnily enough, Mrs. Meade hadn't bothered Rhett for any money. Once she might have. But when she saw him that afternoon her good humor had evaporated, and her nose had wrinkled distastefully.

"I won't bother you for a penny, _Captain_ Butler," she called after him as he passed. "Heaven knows it would be a waste of breath. A fool and his money are soon parted—but a _miser_ and his never are!"

Rhett had stopped and bowed to her, in a parody of gentlemanliness, before striding away. He could not help a smile from touching the edges of his lips, and he found that he was whistling _God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen_ jauntily through his teeth. _Let nothing you dismay! _he thought--and _he_ certainly wasn't.

There was once when he and Mrs. Meade might have been, if not friendly, then at least cordial to one another. And there was once when Rhett might have given her a pretty sum for her collection--given it gladly. It wasn't that he particularly cared about any widows and orphans—he didn't, though he knew that he should. No—it would have been for Bonnie's sake. He would have done anything for his darling Bonnie, anything to ensure that his little girl grew up with all of Atlanta at her feet. But Bonnie was gone now, dead almost a year. Without Bonnie, what did it matter? What did any of it matter? Atlanta might sink into the sea, for all Rhett cared.

Rhett amused himself, as Uncle Henry shuffled through the papers on his desk, with imagining the retort he might have made to Mrs. Meade if he had cared to stop and talk to her. He could have scalded her ears with curses. He chuckled to himself, imagining the look on her face if he was to let loose and tell her what he really thought of her. She was a meddlesome nosy woman who delighted in the foibles of others, which was worse than being a miser, in Rhett's opinion. The Meades, for all their emphasis on breeding, had never had too much in the way of a fortune. It was like that, Rhett reflected—the people without money were forever telling the ones with money how to spend theirs.

He might have mentioned to Mrs. Meade that he had already made his charitable contribution for the year. He had paid sizeably into the Scarlett O'Hara Fund for Scarlett O'Hara. It cost him a small fortune to heat and run the house on Peachtree Street, as well as chunks of money for the continued existence of that great white monster down in Clayton County. Not to mention that Wade and Ella, Scarlett's children, needed books and shoes and clothes and all manner of gilt bobs and small nothings that children always seemed to require. It was a good thing Scarlett hadn't had another husband--another child, another mouth, added to the mix might be enough to make him feel a pinch.

If he had known how expensive it would be to abandon his wife, he might have tried harder to make it work.

_You could have tried harder,_ said a voice in the back of his head, but Rhett pushed it away. Scarlett O'Hara had run roughshod over everyone unlucky enough to be around her for the entirety of her life. She would have sold her own Irish Pa down the river for an Indian-head nickel. She was cruel and selfish and greedy and she had hurt him terribly—and _he_ was the one who should have tried harder? Rhett shook his head in annoyance and tried to cover the feeling by clearing his throat loudly.

"I'd like to go over those figures sometime in the next _hour_ or so, Uncle Henry. If it wouldn't trouble you _too_ much. I do have a train to catch; I'd like to be gone from this godforsaken city as soon as humanly possible."

The old man blinked from behind his glasses. Rhett Butler had never been what folks would have called charitable, but there had always been a certain charm about him. That famous Butler charm was all but evaporated now. Even at his most sarcastic, Rhett Butler had not been nasty. And yet—Uncle Henry let his eyes roam up and down the seated form. Butler was slumped in his chair, and there were gray shadows under his eyes. Folks said he gave up the drink for his little girl but then she had died. He supposed Rhett had taken it up again. His face was haggard and puffy, and his perpetually lean physique was tending a little toward fat.

_The poor man_, Uncle Henry thought. At any other time, he might have called Rhett a devil or a carpetbagger or worse, but on Christmas eve, even Henry Hamilton was feeling sentimental. He pushed the papers across the desk to Rhett.

"I'm sorry for keeping you waiting," he said. "I just need you to sign here and here—and this is an itemized list of draughts on the account by—" Uncle Henry faltered. _Was_ Scarlett still Rhett's wife? Everyone knew that his appearances at the house on Peachtree street were just that: appearances. But had they been divorced? It was doubtful. But then, Butler had always had connections.

"By my former niece," he finished lamely.

Rhett lifted his eyebrows in an exaggerated motion. "_Do_ you mind if I peruse them before signing?" he asked, with cold cordiality. "Since it is my money keeping her in her _grand_ style of living—and paying your salary, I might add."

Uncle Henry flushed. "Not at all," he said shortly.

But it seemed that the steam had gone out of Rhett's act. He sighed—his shoulders slumped. He made the most cursory of looks down at the papers and then signed his name—Rhett K. Butler—in large, looping script across the bottom of each page.

"That's settled," he said, and he stood, as though he really couldn't wait to be gone. "I'm going back to Charleston on the evening train. You may have your office send me a bill of services rendered. Or just draw on the account yourself—you are my trustee. It would be well within your right."

Uncle Henry stood, too. "Thank you," he said, feeling unsure of what exactly he was thanking Rhett for. But then he remembered Ashley. "Thank you," he said again, with more feeling. "It's a wonderful thing you're doing for little Beau. Ashley never would have been able to pay for him to go to school on the pittance he's making at the mill—or for the riding lessons—or the books."

Rhett had been reaching for his coat, but now he turned slowly back to face the old man. "I beg your pardon?" he asked, and there was something electric in his face and voice. "What _I _am doing for Ashley—I haven't done the first thing for him. Whatever could you mean?"

Uncle Henry stammered, "I mean—the money—for the books and things…" he trailed away when Rhett's eyes went narrowed and dangerous.

_Scarlett_, Rhett was thinking. He had told her in no uncertain terms that he would not stand for her supporting Ashley Wilkes. And she was deliberately defying him! He felt a hot rush of anger surge through his body. His hands itched to connect with her skin and teach her the lesson of the cost of going against his will. She had said she didn't love Ashley—and yet, here she was, slipping him money at every turn! _Rhett's_ money! And what else was she _giving_ him when everyone's back was turned—when Melanie was hardly cold in her grave?

"I want to make a change to my account," Rhett said, his voice freezing. He make his words extra clipped, his tone extra sharp, as though it could stanch the little feeling of betrayal in his heart. Why should he care if Scarlett still loved Ashley? Oh--he didn't--he couldn't. He _would not_!

"I do not want Scarlett to have any further access to my funds." Each word fell like a heavy stone sinking to the bottom of any icy lake. "I do not authorize her to drawn on my accounts and I do not authorize you to allow her to do so. She is forbidden. She is cut off. Do you understand me?"

"What about the house?" was all that Uncle Henry could squeak in the face of such dark passion.

"I shall have my Charleston lawyers draw up an eviction notice in the new year," Rhett said carelessly--with studied carelessness. "If Scarlett loves Tara so much she may go and live there as a guest of sister Sue. I'm sure that will go over like a lark."

"But," Uncle Henry protested, "What about Wade and Ella? And Scarlett herself? The mill is barely turning a profit in this recession—how will she live?"

"It's really no longer any of my concern," said Rhett, with such finality that even Uncle Henry could not mistake his meaning.

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There were no taxis to be had, of course. He would have to walk if he were going to catch the last train to Charleston—or else he would have to risk spending Christmas in Atlanta. Unacceptable! Rhett did not relish walking but he relished the idea of spending even another night in this place far less.

It had started to sleet and Rhett pulled his collar up as he walked out into the darkened streets. The days were so blastedly short this time of year; it got dark so early. Atlanta winters were usually mild but once every few years or so, there was a string of bitter days that made Rhett almost pity the Yankees. How _did_ Bostonians survive? He supposed he might start acting like a Yankee, too, if he had to put up with such cold, day in and out, for months at a time.

But for all that, his new wool overcoat was very fine, and the tall hat that covered his ears was of the finest silk. A poor woman sitting on a stoop with her baby in a bundle saw him as he passed and her eyes lit up with a desperate hope.

"Sir!" she called, "Oh, sir, can't you spare anything for me and my little boy? We were supposed to spend Christmas with my mother but she's thrown me out and we've no place to go. Can't you help us—please? In the spirit of Christmas?"

She had been pretty once, he could see that--the baby would have been, if it had been a little plumper--a little cleaner. Together they made such a pathetic picture that Rhett, despite his better judgment, might have helped her—if she had not invoked the season. At the very word 'Christmas' he felt the corners of his mouth turn down scornfully. Christmas! Everyone thought it was a magic word, meant to unlock the heartstrings—and the purse strings. But they did not know what it meant to be a man without a family—without a home. For a man like Rhett, Christmas was a day like any other—worse than any other, because it reminded him of what he had lost.

"I know a place where you can go," he said pleasantly, and the woman's mouth dropped open in surprise and delight. Rhett gave her an address. "Ask for Belle Watling," he told her.

"Oh, thank you, sir! And who is Mrs. Watling? Does she run the boardinghouse?"

"She runs a whorehouse," Rhett corrected her, nearly laughing as her face fell. The sleet had mixed with snow, and the icy pellets stung his face but Rhett barely noticed as he walked on toward the depot.

At the station, he handed his small bag to the Negro porter and walked toward the platform. The boy's voice chattered after him. "Suh! I say, suh!" and Rhett realized he had forgotten to tip the man. He drew his chin to his chest and pretended he hadn't heard. He was tired and cold and in no mood to be charitable.

The boy had caught up with him and Rhett felt another flash of fury. Why couldn't some people just be contented with their lot? Why were people always grasping for things? But the boy didn't ask him for a thing. He only said,

"Laws a'mighty you walk fast! I'm near't a breath tryin' to catch you. Laws! You cain't go up there, mistah."

Rhett looked from the boy to the platform. "Yes, I can," he said. "I've a ticket to Charleston, round-trip. And the next train comes in…" He pulled a large gold watch from his pocket and consulted it. "It should be here already. Let me go or I'll miss it."

"That's what I tryin' to tell you, suh! Ain't no more trains coming ternight. It's stormin' baid up Jonesboro-way and the tracks all froze up. Ain't no more trains comin' through till mawnin'!"

"That's ridiculous," Rhett told him, feeling angry enough to choke the boy. "This is Atlanta. It isn't cold enough to freeze."

"You tell that to Old Man Nature," said the porter, laughing softly. "It's cold enough ternight!"

"What am I supposed to do?" Rhett snapped. "I can't stay here."

"You cain," said the boy gleefully. "But it mought be purty cold out on this here platform!" And he walked away, whistling as Rhett had, only a few hours ago.


	2. Chapter Two

By the time Rhett had walked back into town he felt as though he had frozen solid. His dark mood had turned positively black as he approached the Atlanta hotel, and he pounded on the brass bell on the front desk with all his might and main. The lobby of the hotel was lit up with candles in the windows, and a large decorated fir tree held a place of honor in front of the picture windows. A string quintet played softly in the shadows and Rhett felt bile rise up in his throat.

"I need a room!" he bellowed, standing in the center of the foyer. "Where the hell is everybody!"

The concierge finished helping another guest and moved quickly to where Rhett stood. "I'm terribly sorry," he said. "But I'm afraid we're full up tonight."

"And I am afraid that won't do," Rhett growled. "I need a room, and I need it now."

"Sir, I do apologize, but I don't think you understand. I just gave away our last room…"

"And I don't think _you_ understand," Rhett retorted. "I'm on the board of trustees of this damned place, and I shall have a room. The name is Butler—I'd like the little corner sweet on the fourth floor, at the end of the hall. It is my customary suite."

"Butler," said the concierge, the color draining from his face. "I am sorry, sir. I didn't—recognize you. It's been very busy. Your usual suite, I'm afraid, is being used—honeymooners—but I'll find you other accommodation straight away."

"I want _my_ rooms," Rhett said ominously. "I don't care if you have to kick those honeymooners out on the street. I'll take a drink in the bar while it's prepared. And then I'll have supper in my room. And draw a bath," he said, and he stalked away from the desk into the bar.

He drank in silence for a quarter of an hour, savoring the warmth of the whisky as it passed down his throat. What a nice glow it made in the pit of his stomach! He was too old to be running around town in the cold. Forty-five his last birthday--no, forty-six. Forty-six! Fifty, in only a few short years. He tightened his grip on the cut glass he held. Fifty!

_And nothing to show for it_, said the voice in his head. _No family--no home--no children..._

He took another drink to silence the voice.

How he'd missed the drink when he'd given it up, for Bonnie. He'd give it up again, if he could only have Bonnie back. The lights from the tree in the lobby were reflected in his glass, and all at once they blurred. Rhett kept his head down to hide the haze of tears in his eyes and thought, for a moment, that he was back at the house on Peachtree street, on another Christmas eve, last year. When Bonnie had been alive. They had had a tree of their own, and he had gotten Bonnie a puppy. A great, rampaging St. Bernard, to match the one Scarlett had gotten for Wade Hampton. Bonnie had always wanted what the other children had. The puppy had run through the house, slobbering over everything. Ella had shrieked and Mammy had muttered darkly under her breath and Scarlett had been chastising him, but laughing, too, and saying _Oh, Rhett, you're so bad! Rhett, what were you thinking, Rhett…_

"Rhett?"

He looked up, and for a moment, when he saw her face, he thought he was still dreaming. He blinked, blinked, and she was still there.

"Hello, Rhett," Scarlett said, and there was a small fire being kindled at the bottom of her eyes.

His first thought was that she did not look at all like herself. She had always been thin—like a hungry cat--but now she was positively skinny. She was dressed fashionably in green velvet--that shade had always been a good color on her. But despite her sumptuous clothes, her curled hair, her face showed the tumult of the past year plainly. Her eyes were as green as ever, but there was something hesitant about them. Her lips curved in a tentative smile.

His second thought was that she was still beautiful.

"Scarlett," he said, and was ashamed of the roughness of his voice.

He had not seen her in months. It had been springtime when he had seen her last. She had been at Tara in the summer, and she had wanted him to come and visit, but what was the use of a visit for the sake of keeping up appearances, when there was nobody to see them? When he had first left she had been deranged with the task of getting him back. But when he had seen her in the spring, she had been quiet, calm—almost eerily so. It had thrown him for a loop, at first. Could it be that Scarlett—_understood_? That she had changed? He had almost believed it, until he remembered who she was. Scarlett O'Hara would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. It was all a trick, a ploy. He would not give in, no matter how many pretty tears dropped down those rosy cheeks!

"It's _good_ to see you, Rhett," she said sweetly, and he saw that she was still keeping up the act. Who did she remind him of, now? Those downcast eyes—that gentle smile. Why—it was Melanie! Scarlett was playing Melanie, and the thought of it made Rhett go hot with renewed anger.

And thinking of Melanie reminded him of Ashley. His hand tightened on his glass again and it was all he could do not to hurl it at her.

"I'm glad to see you, too, Scarlett," he said, and paused, cruelly, to let pleasure rush into her face. "I'd rather tell you in person that I've made some changes at the bank today. I've terminated your access to the account. Uncle Henry will no doubt be letting you know soon enough."

For a moment her smile wavered and he saw something of the old Scarlett in her face. But then the spark went out of her eyes and she closed them, briefly.

"Ashley," she said, opening them, and looking over to where a man was seated at a table in the restaurant. Mr. Wilkes himself, the lamplight burnishing his faded golden hair. Rhett followed her gaze and felt his heart harden. "I suppose congratulations are in order," he said, raising his glass in mock good-humor. "Your supper situation looks rather cozy, Scarlett. I suppose you've gotten what you wanted all along."

"How could you say that?" she cried, not angry, but hurt. "I loved Melanie—and she's only been—gone—a few months. I love her son, Rhett—and yes, I do love Ashley, but not in the way you think."

"You have a funny way of showing love, Scarlett."

"And I love you, still," she said, reaching for him. "That hasn't changed, Rhett."

He shrugged her off and lifted his glass to his lips to hide the shock on his face, of hearing her say those words so plainly. For so long he had longed to hear her say them. And it was so easy to believe she was sincere. Those fluttering lashes, those dimpled cheeks. Rhett shook his head. No—he would not fall for that again. Scarlett could not change her ways any more than a leopard could change its spots.

"I'm going up to my room," he said, standing. "Be sure to wish your paramour a happy Christmas for me."

"Rhett," she said, "Won't you come home with me? I don't care if you never give me another penny. Wade and Ella are at home—and they'd love to see you—and I would, too. Oh, please, Rhett," she begged him, tears beginning to form on her lashes. "I _want_ you too. Oh, do! It's Christmas, after all—let us be a family—just for Christmas, darling!" She lifted her lips to try and touch his and he saw that she was crying.

"You're making a fool out of yourself," he said curtly.

"I don't care," she sobbed. "Oh, Rhett, I _miss_ you. I was wrong, so wrong, my darling!"

He shook himself free of her grasp—more roughly than he had to. She lost her balance and tumbled into a nearby table. He did not care, and he did not reach down to help her up. He threw a wad of bills onto the table and walked out of the bar.

Scarlett's cries followed him and almost—almost—made him turn around and go to her. But Rhett remembered Ashley, and hardened his heart, and kept walking. He did not look back.

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Rhett had his bath, and ate his supper, and drank some more of the very good whisky he had sent up from the bar. By ten o'clock he was feeling very pleasantly warm, and the scene with Scarlett had faded so that it seemed like a very distant memory. He wished he had something to read, and looked over the bookshelves. There was a Bible, and someone had left a copy of a book by Mr. Charles Dickens. Rhett picked it up, and glanced at the title.

"A Christmas Carol," he said scornfully, but he could not resist picking it up and reading the first few pages. After a chapter or so, he cast the book aside, and poured himself some more whisky. The fire in the fireplace crackled merrily and Rhett wiggled his toes in a mean glee, thinking of the honeymooners he had cast out of the room—_his_ room.

He was feeling very weary from his long day and dozed a little, here and there. Such strange dreams he had! He was with Bonnie, dear Bonnie. She was holding his hand. He was in a bed in another hotel in New Orleans, and Scarlett and he shared a pillow, talking long into the night. Suddenly the picture changed and she was falling, falling, rolling head over heels down the stairs and he could not catch her. She cried out for him, in a frightened voice that belied great pain, but he could not catch her. He always reached out for her--she always fell faster, farther, until she landed in a pitiful heap, her neck bent awkwardly, a crimson stain spreading on the skirt. Dark as blood. Dark as death.

Here was Melanie's sweet face telling him that Scarlett had lost a baby, their baby—and here was Melanie, again, telling him Scarlett would get better. Such a rush of joy! Where had that joy gone?

Scarlett's voice was calling _Rhett, Rhett_, and Rhett startled awake. The fire had burned down to embers and it was dark in the room. And yet still he could see another figure seated in the opposite chair. An intruder? His eyes strained to make out the face. Round rosy cheeks—white hair--a button nose—kindly, gleaming eyes. _St. Nick? _Rhett wondered, and then felt ridiculous. Of course it wasn't, how stupid… His eyes widened and he sat straight up in shock.

"I'm dreaming, yet," he told himself. "Or else I've had too much of that." He looked askance at the whisky bottle at his elbow.

"Well, if ye have, me fine broth of a boy," said Gerald O'Hara, in his familiar brogue, "I wish ye'd pass it over, for some of us have had none at all to speak of!"


	3. Chapter Three

Rhett tightened the sash of his silk robe and pushed the decanter of whisky and a glass over to the ghost of Gerald O'Hara. The ghost! Of Gerald O'Hara! He smirked and shook his head at his own folly. There was no ghost. He was obviously dreaming. Gerald O'Hara had been dead for years, and Rhett didn't believe in ghosts. And besides, if, _if_ Gerald was going to haunt anybody, why would it be Rhett? When Rhett had treated Scarlett so harshly…

"_Harsh_ tisn't the word," said Gerald, as though he could read Rhett's thoughts. "When I think of the way you've treated me fine Katie Scarlett, me pearl of a girl…"

"So you aren't going to murder me in cold blood," Rhett drawled, sitting back in his chair.

"I would if I could!" Gerald drained his whisky glass and slammed it on the table with surprising force, given the fact that he was a figment of Rhett's imagination. "But I can't," he finished, as ruffled as a bantam rooster. He put out his hand and made as though he were going to sock Rhett in the jaw—Rhett recoiled—even in death, he feared, the little Irishman might have some fight left in him. But Gerald's fist passed through Rhett's face instead of connecting with it. There was a feeling of a gentle breeze, and a great chill. It was shocking, but Rhett soon recovered his wits. By God, it was the damnedest dream! But at least there was nothing to fear from it.

"So I suppose I am safe," Rhett agreed, feeling slightly smug.

Gerald shrugged, and poured himself more whisky. "In a manner of speaking," he conceded.

"In a _manner_ of speaking? What does that mean?"

"It means, me boy," Gerald leaned over the table menacingly. "That you're in grand danger of forgetting your soul."

"The Irish," Rhett said, sarcastically, waving a hand in dismissal. "Such a romantic breed. Speak plainly, man, and say what you…" Rhett broke off and snapped his fingers. "My God, I don't know why I thought of it before! It's a trick! Scarlett arranged this somehow. It's just like in the book I read, that book by Mr. Dickens! And Scarlett must have read it—hard to believe as that is. But she must have—she has. She's hired you—and you broke into my room—and that thing you did with your hand was an illusion…or something…"

Gerald looked offended. "I wouldn't lie to ye, lad."

Rhett said, coldly, "You'd better get out of my room at once or I'll call the police. Or shoot you, myself." He was not armed, but this—_imposter_—could not know that.

But Gerald's face showed no fear. He leaned forward and studied Rhett for a long time. "Blessed Mary, he means it!" he said finally, quietly. Sadly. "I can see into his heart—black as night it is—the man would murder his own kin by marriage, if he could. Shoot away," he said, leaning back in his chair. "As I'm already dead, I've no fear of ye."

"Now see here, whoever you are," Rhett said, and reached for him. But again his hand passed through Gerald's body, and there was that deep, overwhelming sense of cold cold. "Whoever you are—who—who are you?" he asked, feeling really frightened for the first time.

"I'm Gerald O'Hara," said Gerald O'Hara, "And I've come to take you back."

_Back where?_ Rhett wanted to say, but the ghost had reached for him and this time his hand connected with Rhett's flesh. There was a searing cold and a flash of light and all at once, the ground under his feet disappeared and the walls around him dissolved into blackness.

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They were outside. It was night. It was cool, but not cold as it had been earlier in the evening. The smells of the city had vanished and Rhett smelled only the clean wet earth, the scent of spruce on the wind. He and Gerald—for he was finally beginning to believe that, at least in some incarnation, this _was_ Gerald O'Hara—seemed to be standing in a little copse of trees. The frosty ground was white except where their footprints showed dark against the stubbled grass.

"Where are we?" Rhett wondered.

Gerald seemed not to hear him. He knelt down and he touched the earth; he picked up a handful of the clay and held it to his face.

"Home," he said softly. "I've missed it—I've seen it so in my dreams. I told Katie Scarlett—the earth—_our_ bit of earth. I told her to keep care of it, but I didn't mean at the cost of…"

"At the cost of what?" Rhett wondered.

"Of everything," Gerald said, shortly, as though he'd just remembered Rhett was there. "Come," he commanded. "We've a ways to go."

They walked. Rhett tilted his head to look up and the stars swam dizzily overhead. They were like diamonds scattered across a swath of velvet. Had he really noticed them before? He laughed softly to himself. "This really is the craziest dream I've ever had." And the most realistic--the cold was pricking at his arms under the thin cloth of his smoking jacket and his breath was coming short in his chest.

"Are we almost there?" he wondered, to Gerald, who held up a hand, motioning for him to be quiet. Rhett narrowed his eyes--and then opened them in shock! For there, before him, was a great white house, that had not been there just a moment before.

Gerald stepped up to a window, lit up softly from within and beckoned Rhett to join him. Rhett stepped forward, and the two men stood at the window together, watching as a scene beyond the panes materialized.

At first there were only the hazy outlines of things, but it grew sharper and clearer by the second, so that Rhett soon saw quite plainly a cozy room, with a fire burning in the hearth, and gay fir boughs strewn across the mantelpiece. A dark-haired woman had her back to him and was arranging a bowl of flowers on a low table by the door. Two little girls were stringing popped corn to make a garland, and in the middle of the room was…was…

In the middle of the room was Bonnie. A dear little child with black curls and porcelain skin. "Pa!" she commanded, and Rhett moved forward, involuntarily, as if he would go to her. But it was odd—Bonnie had never called him Pa. He had been Daddy, Daddy dearest, always.

"Coming, Katie Scarlett!" cried Gerald's own voice, though Gerald was standing next to Rhett. He watched as a much younger Gerald walked into the room. He went over to the girl and picked her up, held her heavenward. Now that Rhett could see her face, he knew it was not Bonnie. The girl's eyes were pea green, and her chin was pointed, like a little cat's. But it was uncanny. It was Scarlett, Scarlett to the life. It was Scarlett as a child, Scarlett as he had never seen her before.

"Shall I show you your present?" asked Gerald-of-then, as Gerald-of-now looked on. "And then, when you have seen him, shall we take him on a ride to Twelve Oaks and show him off to Master Ashley Wilkes?"

"Oh, Pa, a pony!" lisped little Scarlett. "I want him! I want him now! And I don't want Ashley to see him. I don't like smelly old boys."

Rhett laughed, despite himself. If only that feeling had persisted.

"I do want to show silly India, though! She's horrid—she'll be jealous as can be!"

Rhett laughed again, and Gerald too, this time. Some things never did change.

Ellen O'Hara moved away from the table to speak softly but severely to her husband. "It is Christmas eve," she reminded him. "It is hardly proper to go visiting tonight. Scarlett can see her friends in the morning."

"Oh, Pa! Must we do as mother says?"

"You can do whatever your heart desires," Gerald told his little black-haired daughter.

"But Mr. O'Hara…"

"Ellen, if the child wants to go visiting, visiting she shall go. Let me hear no more of it."

Ellen turned away, defeated, and the child Scarlett rejoiced.

Rhett gaped as a large black woman entered the room with drinks on a tray. It was Mammy, Mammy! He guffawed, and was surprised when she looked up toward the window. "Did you hear dat noise?" she inquired of a young Pork. "Go see what it is."

Pork came out and Rhett shrank back against the hedge, but Gerald laughed. "Don't worry, me boy! They can't see us."

"But Mammy looked right at us!"

"Some are more perceptive than others," Gerald told him. "Look!" He raised his arm and pointed.

Little Scarlett and Gerald were coming out of the house, onto the verandah, but a small, furious toddler had followed. "Oh, please, let me come, too!" Suellen cried.

Scarlett stuck out her tongue. "You can't, silly baby."

Suellen burst into tears. "You can't wear my new rabbit hat, Scarlett!" She ran and tried to snatch it back but Scarlett was too quick for her. She held it high, out of her sister's reach. "But it's mine!" Suellen cried. "Mine! It was a present for me from Aunt Eulalie!"

"It's mine, now," Scarlett said haughtily.

Gerald's voice was a bass of disapproval. "Hey now, little missies, what is the meaning of this doolaly?"

"Scarlett stole my hat, Pa, and won't give it back."

Gerald whirled to look at Suellen, eyes blazing. In a flash he reached out and paddled her on the backside. The Gerald beside Rhett winced. "Nobody likes a tale-teller, Suellen O'Hara. And you must share with your sister. The hat looks splendid on her. Mother will buy you a new hat."

Behind him Scarlett preened and ran to take her father's hand. The two of them ambled off toward the stables, chattering to one another. Rhett noticed that the child Scarlett did not give her father much chance to get a word in edgewise.

Suellen remained where she was, sobbing, and Rhett heard Mammy's voice through the window, thick with disapproval. "He gwine spoil dat chile, Miss Ellen."

Ellen sounded tired. "He has already, Mammy," she said, sinking down into a chair by the fire.

From the verandah still came the sounds of Suellen's sobs. Gerald turned away from the window and Rhett understood the scene had ended.

"Twelve Oaks," said Gerald, motioning for Rhett to follow. But he did not seem to be intending for the same ghostly sort of transport. The two men walked down the bridal path and when the house Wilkes's house burst into view Rhett was reminded of the day, so long ago, that he had first seen Scarlett here. He never could have guessed, then, how it all would turn out. If he could only go back to that day, back—he would do so much differently!

Twelve Oaks seemed much the same as it had been the day of the barbecue. The trees were a little smaller, the brick more brightly whitewashed. This time, they climbed the steps and entered the house through the door, which had been left ajar. Once again Rhett was struck by the strange feeling of being in a scene, but not part of it. It was like being at the theatre, only the players did not know they were being watched.

A pretty, pale woman sat at the piano. Mrs. Wilkes—Rhett drew in his breath to see her. She was the picture of her niece, Melanie Hamilton. Small and timid, like a sparrow. But there was a self-confidence to her that Melanie had lacked.

"A good woman," Gerald said wistfully. "She doesn't have much longer but she doesn't know it yet. She'll sicken over the new year—by February she'll be gone. It does the heart good to see her again. She was a dear friend."

Rhett watched as Mrs. Wilkes played the opening lines to a Christmas carol. Two girls—one obviously a smaller version of India Wilkes—began to sing.

_See amid the winter's snow,__  
__Born for us on earth below,__  
__See the tender Lamb appears,__  
__Promised from eternal years…._

_Sing it through Jerusalem!_

_Christ is born in Bethlehem._

"Don't you see her in, er, heaven?" Rhett wondered, curious.

Gerald turned his head away. "It isn't quite like what ye'd expect," he said softly. "We don't all sit about in a great room together, chatting of time gone by. There is a feeling of togetherness, yes—but it isn't more than that. I can't explain it to you. I never was good with me words."

The child Scarlett had been sitting prettily by, arranging her skirts so that they might be best admired. But the song went on and nobody was paying any attention to her. She pulled on Ashley's sleeve and he smiled down at her briefly before turning back to the music. Scarlett's miniature brow darkened. She stomped her foot—she stood up—she gave a bloodcurdling yowl and reached forward to rip a handful of pages from a book close at hand.

"Scarlett!" cried Mrs. Wilkes, jumping up from the piano.

"Oh, Mother, Ashley's book! She's ruined Ashley's new book!"

Gerald's brogue cut across the commotion like a knife. "Sure and she's a naughty one," he bellowed, but his blue eyes were twinkling like twin stars. "Master Ashley doesn't mind, though, does he? I'll get you another book, sir."

Scarlett smiled triumphantly at India and Honey Wilkes.

The scene shimmered around the edges, and suddenly the child Scarlett had grown. A pretty, slender, vibrant girl of about fourteen pulled at the hand of her unseen companion.

"Oh, _please_, Ashley!" she pouted, and her voice was so—so—_Scarlett_. Rhett wanted to laugh, from the sheer delight of it. "Come and dance with me! I don't see why you even bothered to throw a Christmas ball if you're not going to dance."

Ashley's gentle laughter was strange to Rhett's ears—when was the last time he had heard Ashley laugh? Not in…years. Perhaps not since the day when he had first met him, before the war.

"Scarlett, you're so pretty that you must dance. Anything else would be an affront to our guests. But I have guests to attend to, dear. My cousin Melanie is tired from her journey and doesn't feel well enough to dance. And it would be terribly rude of me to leave her as a wallflower tonight."

"Melanie Hamilton—fiddle dee dee! Oh, Ashley, dance with me, now! If you don't I shall die!"

"My cousin Charles is fond of dancing, Scarlett. Shall I bring him over and introduce him to you."

Scarlett tossed her head and the green ribbons in her hair danced. "I've met Charlie Hamilton," she said nastily. "I never met a stupider, more awkward boy in my life. I'd rather dance with a—a pig!"

Ashley's brow darkened, but only for a fleeting moment. "Oh, Scarlett, I know you don't mean that."

"But I do! I _hate_ Charles—I wish he and Melanie had never come to Clayton County!"

"Scarlett!" Ashley seemed genuinely shocked. "Both of them love you as well as I do! And even if—you do not like them—it's Christmas. A time of peace and goodwill."

"Goodwill, fiddle-dee-dee!" Scarlett cried. She glanced down and when she looked up her eyes were brimming with tears. "Oh, Ashley, won't _you_ show me goodwill and dance with me?"

Before he could say another word, Scarlett had pulled him by the arm into a throng of dancers. Rhett saw Scarlett's lips curve over Ashley's shoulder. Melanie Hamilton, a pretty brown bird of a girl, followed them with her eyes and sighed. Charles Hamilton was visibly disappointed and wore his heart on his face for all to see. Suddenly, Gerald's Irish brogue rose above the music.

"And isn't my pet the prettiest girl in the room! See how she's taken Miss Hamilton's beau from her—and left a trail of broken hearts in her wake, to be sure."


	4. Chapter Four

Gerald O'Hara of the past had spoken but Gerald O'Hara—of the here? Now?—was silent as the grave. The scene before them was fading, but Gerald still seemed transfixed by it. Though the images were rapidly growing less and less distinct, snippets of conversation still carried. Scarlett's high, piping voice, Gerald's booming one, praising her prettiness. Praising it so that Rhett thought for the first time in his life, how terrible it must be to be a woman. Oh, he had always considered his sex above the gentler one—but he had supposed women were complicit in forging the chains that held them back. Now he had a pang of uncertainty. If a girl was praised for her charm, her beauty, from her earliest age, how could she be expected to develop other aspects of her character? Kindness—gentleness—tenderness.

The people inside Twelve Oaks—the father and daughter—were moving, through the foyer and out onto the verandah, into the night, and instinctively Rhett followed them, as the ghostly child Scarlett and her father seated their mounts, made their way back down the bridal path and toward home, the frosty sky a great dome overhead.

"Did you see how I put India Wilkes in her place?" Scarlett tossed her head, and looked at her father. "She tried to hold me back when I cut in on Ashley and that mealy-mouthed little Melanie. But I yanked her curl and pushed her away. She won't try something like that again."

Next to Rhett, Gerald O'Hara moved almost soundlessly. But up ahead, trotting next to his daughter, Gerald O'Hara of days past chuckled indulgently.

"How could he resist, an' with you in your pretty new dress? My pet is the toast of Clayton County—a regular firebrand!"

"I'm the most like you, Pa," said Scarlett, certainly, slanting her eyes toward him to see if he was pleased—and he was. A wind caught her curls and lifted them away from her rabbit's fur collar. "Careen and Suellen—they're Mother's girls, of course. But I'm yours. You don't _need_ a son as long as you've got me."

In response, Gerald-of-then reached over and took his girl's mittened hand, as she sat on her pony. "Sure and I don't," he said, but Rhett heard the quaver in the man's voice, which he covered up by beginning to sing,

_The holly green, the ivy green  
The prettiest picture you've ever seen  
Is Christmas in Killarney  
With all of the folks at home! _

They raced on ahead, but their observers followed at a slower pace. Gerald O'Hara, Rhett noticed—the Gerald beside him now—had been wearing a plain waistcoat and breeches—the very same outfit he often wore in life, though insufficient against this night's temperature. But he hadn't seemed to mind the cold until now. He shivered. When he lifted his face, Rhett could see that the moment's hesitation hadn't anything to do with a physical discomfort.

"Why did you bring me here?" Rhett asked, in a low voice. "To see this? If it grieves you so? Why did you not leave me in my bed, sir?"

Because in his own chest, an uncomfortable feeling was welling. Shame? But no—Rhett had not felt shame in many years. He rolled his shoulders, and he shrugged to ward it off.

They had reached Tara. Gerald picked up a fallen hickory switch and began to twitch it around his knees. Rhett seated himself on a low stone wall, and began to pat his pockets for his cigars. He found one—lighted it. A door to the house opened and Pork came out, with a basket of scraps to toss to the pigs.

"Burnin' leaves," he commented to himself, smelling the smoke on the air. "Strange time to do it, Christmas night."

Gerald's face brightened to see his old valet, he lifted his hand and looked as if he would call out, before he remembered. Pork went back inside, and then he turned and sighed. Settled himself next to Rhett on the wall, his bandy legs dangling.

"It does pain me, true," he agreed. "To see the mistakes that I made with the girl. A person isn't born knowing what to do—more's the pity—he's taught. I taught the girl the wrong things. But I want you to see that. I want you to see that her faults aren't _her_ fault—not entirely. I _did_ want a son—I thought of her that way—and it's fine, sure, for a man to be brash and rough. But a woman must learn more. Ellen tried to teach her—you saw that—but I was always lord of this manor. Ah, well! Ah, well! To do it again—again! Sometimes I wonder God did not punish me for it, but then—how could he? He is a father himself. And a father of a daughter can't be blamed for loving her."

"There is a difference between loving and spoiling," Rhett remarked, but that uncomfortable feeling was back, lodged in the space between his ribs. For hadn't he treated Scarlett much the same way, sometimes? Praising her cruelty, laughing at her jabs and spites, encouraging her to fly in the face of what was right, and proper? He shrugged it off. He felt a little smug toward O'Hara, and a little annoyed. So he had spoiled Scarlett? So what? Half the girls in Charleston, in Savannah, in New Orleans, in Richmond, all over the South, had been indulged similarly. And Rhett had been a father himself, and _he_ hadn't spoiled his little girl.

"Didn't ye?" asked Gerald, flicking his hickory switch, with a little sidelong glance.

Before Rhett could help himself, images crowded his mind. They were not shown to him, with a ghostly hand, they were only recalled from times past. Bonnie Blue, given the chipped bowl she did not like to eat her breakfast porridge out of, picking it up, smashing it on the floor. Scarlett exclaiming, perhaps not in the same dulcet tones that Ellen O'Hara had used to protest her husband's actions, but here was Rhett sneering at her, picking his own bowl up, heaving it at the wall where it shattered with a merry crashing sound. Bonnie laughed, her head thrown back—laughed at her mother. Here was Bonnie tearing up a book that belonged to Ella. Deviling Wade Hampton, as he tried to study his arithmetic. Scarlett complaining, raising her voice, even raising a hand to the child—he had wanted to beat _her_ for that! Always, always, Rhett had taken his girl's side.

He thought back to what he had seen at Twelve Oaks, recalled young Scarlett's bossiness, her greediness, her disdain of other peoples' feelings and desires.

Perhaps—perhaps Bonnie should have grown up to be like that?

No! _No_. Not Bonnie. She was sweet and good—there was nothing of Scarlett's nastiness in her.

"How dare you imply such a thing to me?" asked Rhett, tamping out the ember of his cigar against the stone of the wall. His voice shook and his hands were shaking. He decided to raise his voice. "You, Gerald O'Hara—you didn't just _spoil_ the girl. You created a monster. My Bonnie wasn't a monster."

"She was a sweet child, sure," agreed Gerald affably. "At age four. But at fourteen, how would she have been?"

How would she have been? For a moment Rhett could see her—tall and slightly stocky, the Irish in her, black-curled, snappingly blue of eye. Was that a gleam of acquisitiveness there, as the adult Bonnie turned her head? Was that a cruel smile playing on her lips?

"No!" he shouted, to banish the image. He jumped from the wall. "No! I'll never know what Bonnie was like because she died—she died. God damn you—for making me think—! _Damn_ you! I'll kill you—I _will_—"

He lunged for his father-in-law, who promptly vanished. The space where he was standing was now devoid of any presence. Rhett lost his balance and fell, heaving for breath, onto the frozen ground. The lights shining from the windows of Tara grew fainter and fainter—a great mist crept up, quickly up, from the hollows by the river. The house disappeared stone by stone, until it was gone, and Rhett was alone in the whirling mist. He recalled Scarlett's old dream, explained to him—he was living it. Where was he? Where was home, and safe, and light? For the first time in many, many years, Rhett Butler felt something like real fear.

"Gerald!" he cried. "I'm sorry!" His voice creaked on the last word, so unused was he to using it. "Gerald—Gerald O'Hara! Come back—come back! Oh, someone—_please_. Someone please _help me_. Please!"


	5. Chapter Five

The mist swirled closer and closer, tendrils of it snaking into his nose, his mouth, creeping down his throat and choking him. "Help me!" Rhett cried. "Help me! Help me!"

He woke, gasping for air, in the chair by the dying fire. The clock was just chiming the hour—one in the morning.

A dream then—thank God, a dream! The book—_A Christmas Carol_—had tumbled from his lap, and fallen to the floor, pages come loose from the bindings, scattered about his feet like leaves. But when Rhett leaned down to retrieve them, he felt the cuffs of his trousers wet, as though he had been walking outside, in the dew. What explanation could he have for it?

And there were two glasses of whisky on his table, by the decanter. How to explain that? Feeling the blood leech from his face, he grabbed one, drained it, and then the other, slamming it down on the tabletop as the ghost of Gerald O'Hara had done.

He stood, and paced before the hearth a moment. It had seemed so real—but it could not be. His mind clicked and whirred, trying to make sense of it. It was the book. Of course it was! His dream had taken the form of the story he had been reading when he had fallen asleep. Such things _could_ happen. And he had heard stories of men sleep-walking—he had been in the army with such a fellow. Waking up in the night and walking round as though he was awake—they had had to watch him, take his gun from him at night, lest he, in his weird state, turn it on his comrades.

But had he, Rhett Butler, ever done such a thing? Not to his knowledge. He would have to ask Belle—he had spent nights with her often enough. He chuckled mirthlessly, and reached into his pocket for the cigar he had put there hours ago.

It was gone. He remembered lighting it, waiting for Gerald to speak by the stone wall.

He was losing his mind. That was the only conclusion he could draw. It happened to people sometimes, when they had had a great loss. He had lost so much, so fast: Bonnie, and the other children, too, for Wade and Ella were lost to him, now. The child Scarlett had been carrying. Dead—and by his hand? Miss Melanie—dead. His home. Scarlett herself.

And any chance at happiness.

He buried his face in his hand and with the other poured the rest of the whisky unsteadily into his glass. Drained it, and moved to the bed, sprawled across it. He was drunk now, he thought, at least he had had enough to drink to get him through this terrible night. Would it never end? Never?

He slept fitfully, tormented not exactly by dreams but by weird snippets of memory, Christmasses long ago come back around for him again. He was a child, of five or six, and the flickering candles on the table danced crazily before his eyes. Another Christmas, long ago. His father was picking at his goose, displeased by it—but then, Rhett's father had never been pleased by anything. Rhett had gotten a puppy for Christmas that year, a small hound, his first bird dog. His father had kicked it, and made it squeal. He had drowned it, because it was not housebroken. Shortly after the new year—Rhett remembered fighting his father as he told Avery, the grizzled black man, to take away the squirming burlap bag and throw it in the river. Scratching, biting. He had been whipped but it had been nothing compared to the small dog's terrified cries as it was taken out. His mother had come to him, later, with a towel of ice to put on his blistered back, talking soothingly to him. Father was upset at something. Father was not himself. And when Rhett refused to see that, the most important thing: Father is the master of this house. Rhett had decided then that one day he would be master, himself, and there would be nobody who would dare tell him what to do. When they had asked him the next year what he wanted for Christmas, he had said nothing, and meant it. There was nothing he wanted—nothing he had wanted since then but freedom, and ability to have what he wanted.

His mother—he saw her before him. She had tried so hard. Every year, red bows around the banisters, spruce garlands on the mantelpiece. Snow white camellias in silver bowls, on shining mahogany tables. Father had spent Christmas with his woman, the whore he kept in town, and come home, and Mother had dared to chide him—gently, so gently—for not being home for dinner. He had taken the silver bowl and thrown it at her, catching her in the face, so that her lip split, and blood ran down her chin into the lace at her throat. She had dressed so carefully that night. And she tried to smile—it made her lip bleed more.

Rhett had flown at his father. He was bigger than the man, by then—at fifteen he stood six feet tall. He was strong, and well-muscled, because he saw to it that he was. He struck his father, he beat him, as he had seen his father beat his mother. Only a few blows, but they were enough to send Robert Butler reeling.

In January they had shipped him to West Point. That terrible year was the last Christmas he spent at home. The next year they did not send for him, and he wandered the halls of the deserted academy like a ghost. By the year after, he had been expelled, and he spent the last days of the waning year in New Orleans, with the girl-whore Belle Watling, still Isabelle Xavier then.* They had had a week-long debauch, hardly noticing when one day melted into the other.

He remembered Christmas of '64, which he spent with the army. A haze of stars, half-obscured by gunsmoke, and a bitter cold. Someone had been coughing blood, someone else reciting in a low voice the words of the holy book: "Glory to God in the highest, and peace to men on which his favors rest." It had been easy to believe there was peace on earth on a night as still as that—but no! There was the distant sound of cannon as the wind turned.

Bonnie. Bonnie. She danced before him, slightly out of reach. Under the mistletoe—"gimme a kiss, Daddy"—with a crown of tinsel on her burnished black hair. Asking him, in her little lisping voice, "Is Santa Claus as handsome as _you_? And will you shoot him if I say he is?" Scarlett, in a rare show of affection, sitting on his knee while Bonnie sat on the other, saying, "Why, Santa Claus can't hold a handle to your pa, Bonnie Blue Butler." Scarlett, giving him a kiss so quick and fleeting that it might have been a snowflake, melting as soon as it touched his skin. But touching the pretty diamond brooch he had given her, pinned to the throat of her dress, and the happy look in her eyes was like a kiss. Sitting on the davenport in the parlor, as the candle-lights on the Christmastree flickered in the dim, all of them, the whole family, Rhett with his arm around Scarlett, and Wade and Ella like bookends on either side of them, Bonnie sandwiched in between, laughing uproariously at something her mother had said.

_Oh, Bonnie. We might have made it if you had lived. _

He woke again, with a foul taste in his mouth, his head stuffed with cotton wool, and his face hot to the touch. Half-way between sleep and wake he moaned,

"Water—water"—like a dying man.

There was a cool touch on his brow, and a cup held to his lips. He drank, feeling like a small boy.

"There! There, Captain Butler," said a voice—a sweet voice. "You're going to be well. There! Hush, now."

Rhett looked up with disbelieving eyes at the gentle face that loomed over him.

"Well, Miss Melly," he breathed—hardly daring to breathe, lest she disappear. "It's been a long time."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Melanie Wilkes smoothed her brown hair and sat back in her chair by the bed. She looked the same—as good and gentle as ever, with that same spark of sympathy, of understanding, in her eyes. Yes—she was as demure and placid as she had ever been in life, in death, but there was something about her that was not as girlish as it had been. This Melanie Wilkes—this _ghost_ Melanie Wilkes—was not a shrinking violet. There was a new air of confidence to her, of womanliness.

"Why, Miss Melly," breathed Rhett. "You've grown up at last."

Her giggle, at least, was no less girlish than it had been. "I suppose I had to," she said, a little regretfully. "Death will do that to a person."

"You seem—you seem—different, somehow."

"Yes—I know a lot of things, now, Captain Butler. Death does that, too. It lifts aside the curtain and shows you the truth of the matter—all matters. Captain Butler, you're a learned man—but I know more, now, than you can ever dream of."

"You always did," said Rhett, thinking of the way that Melanie had always treated Scarlett. She had had the knack of turning the other cheek, of looking past the bad to see the good.

It was easier to humor the ghost of Melanie than it had been the ghost of Gerald. And easier to believe in her, too. But why shouldn't he? Could he believe goodness like that _could _die? And didn't he feel Melanie's presence in his life, sometimes, even now? "I suppose you'll want to know all about Ashley and Beau? How they're doing?"

"I know," said Melanie simply. "I visit them often. And you Captain Butler."

"And I suppose you think I'm bungling my life quite badly?"

"Well, I'm not pleased with what's happened with you and Scarlett," Melanie admitted, twisting her small white hands in her lap. "But I—oh, I understand. But I do think—I do think you should forgive her."

"And," sighed Rhett, wearily, "I suppose you're going to drag me off into the mists and show me _why_ you think I should. Like Gerald O'Hara did."

She dimpled at the mention of his name. "I won't drag you," said Melanie Wilkes graciously, "But if you _would _like to come—I would be so happy."

"And if I don't want to come?"

"Oh! Then—I'll just have to sit here, and haunt you, until you do, I suppose."

Rhett climbed from bed and extended his hand, grinning at her new forcefulness. "Let's go, then," he said agreeably.

The spectre of Melanie Wilkes had turned bright crimson and turned her back.

"Wouldn't you—like to—put on some proper clothes?" she asked a little weakly, and Rhett smiled wider. There were some aspects of the human spirit that even death could not erase. It appeared that Melanie Wilkes would never, even in all eternity, be entirely comfortable with the sight of a strange man in a dressing gown. Rhett shrugged it off, and donned a shirt and coat, and traded his shoes for his slippers.

"You can turn around," he told her. "I'm decent, now."

And then Melanie did another surprising thing: she made a joke.

"Decent," she said, "Would never have been the word I chose to describe you."

She grinned, and reached out and touched his fingers. The ground fell away beneath their feet.

* * *

*You will have to read my story, Tomorrow, to know what this means.


	6. Chapter Six

"Tara again," Rhett said, a little distastefully as the mist began to settle around them. "I'm beginning to feel like I own this place."

"But you do," said Melanie, surprising him, as the trees and fences became clearer, more distinct, around them. "You give—_gave_—Scarlett money for its upkeep. A part of Tara, then, is yours."

He had never thought of it that way before: of Tara, as his. He looked around, curiously. Even on the dark starless night that had materialized along with the house and trees, there was a bright moon, and he could see all the way down to the bottoms near the river. It was—well, from what he could see—it was a good piece of land. He understood, now, something of why Gerald—and Scarlett—had always been so attached to the place. "There's Irish in me, too," Rhett muttered, feeling the stirrings of something akin to—pride? Longing?—in his chest. "But, thank God, I've the wits to resist it."

He turned toward the plantation house and then he had a shock, for Tara did not look the way he had always seen it before. It lacked the grandeur of the days before the war—even the serviceability and austere plainness it had had when he had visited it, more recently. It was dilapidated, now: the brick crumbling, the whitewashed faded and streaked with scorch marks. The roof was sagging in places; window panes had been broken out and their empty places stuffed with rags. A closer look at his surroundings revealed that the yard was overgrown, the fences gapped like missing teeth.

"Cut down for firewood," Melanie whispered. "Oh, those nights were so cold."

"Is this the future?" Rhett asked, uneasily. "Miss Melly—is this what will happen to Tara if I cut Scarlett off from my account?"

Melanie smiled. "Scarlett would never let Tara look like this again, Captain Butler. She would find a way—even if she had to sell herself to do it. No; this is still the past. This is Christmas, 1865—the first Christmas after the war. Such a dark time—but Ashley was home, and it meant the world to me."

As if Melanie's words had set something into motion, some driving force behind the scene, the door opened on the verandah, and Melanie herself appeared—younger, thin as a lathe, dressed in a ragged calico gown, but with a radiant smile on her face.

"Scarlett, Scarlett!" she cried. "Come and see—it's snowing. Big, goosedown feathers—we'll have a White Christmas this year."

Behind the young Melanie, a hungry cat of a woman appeared. It took Rhett a moment to realize that this was Scarlett. My God, he thought, she's so skinny? Her cheekbones stood out sharply under her skin, and her eyes were too large in her face, in the way that hunger brings them out. Her dress, if it was possible, was in even worse condition than Melanie's, and her feet were covered against the cold with pieces of old carpeting. Rhett crept closer to hear her speak—her voice was as thin and reedy as her body.

"Snow," said Scarlett, flatly. "And I put those winter crops in the ground only two weeks ago. They'll be killed now—can't survive a freezing frost. We'll have no potatoes till spring, now, Melly, and I don't know what we'll do."

With a little shock Rhett noted how easily, and certainly, she spoke of things like crops and frosts. It was the same way she sometimes spoke of lumber or planning technique at the mill. He had always supposed it was Scarlett putting on airs—he knew little of these things himself. But now he saw that there had been hidden depths of knowledge to his wife he had never suspected.

"Oh, Scarlett," chided the Melanie-of-then. "Can't we have a little Christmas cheer this year? With Ashley home—and the war over—and all of us safe and together?"

"With Mother gone," Scarlett countered. "And your own brother Charlie dead, Melanie?"

Melanie dissolved into tears, and Rhett saw Scarlett check her annoyance.

"I shouldn't have said that," she confessed, awkwardly. "Melly, I didn't mean it. I'm just so worried—and tired. Suellen's lazy as a lump and no help—and Pa—oh, Pa's worse than no help. He's lost his mind. Don't _cry_, Melanie. You go on in the kitchen and help Mammy with supper. I'm going down to the river to cut a tree. You _said_ you wanted a Christmas tree, just like old times, and I'm going to get one, and bring it up, and we'll decorate it. Won't that make you feel better?"

They followed Scarlett down to the river bottom and watched her select a thin spruce sapling, and with a small ax, attack the trunk to bring it down. It took her some while, and Rhett saw his wife, always so sumptuously dressed, so desirous of the best things in life, lay down in the dirt with seemingly no mind of it. After much grunting and huffing, she felled the small tree, and then dragged it up the path, over the verandah, and into the house, where the family crowded around her in delight.

"Oh, Scarlett! It's perfect! What will we put on it? In the old days we would have had cranberry strings, and popped corn…"

"No food wasted on this tree," Scarlett said wearily. "That's all I ask. Pa, come away from that fire, honey. You'll burn yourself, Pa, darling. There's a good boy."

Rhett recoiled again when he saw the wasted frame of Gerald O'Hara—vacant of eye, hanging of mouth. He trotted after his daughter like a small child, and Rhett felt his heart thump painfully in his chest as Scarlett spoke to him so gently, with such agony in her eyes. Her strong, solid Pa—all through the journey from Atlanta she had clung to the idea that he would be her protector. To arrive home—to find him this way?

"Mrs. O'Hara will be liking this tree," he said—but hadn't Scarlett mentioned that her mother was dead?

"No, Pa!" Scarlett was sharp. "Pa, she—she—oh, never mind, there's no use trying to reason with him."

For the first time, Rhett noticed Ashley hovered at the edge of the throng. "Scarlett," he said in a low, beaten voice, "Why didn't you tell me you wanted a tree? I would have gone and gotten it. There was no need to go yourself."

Scarlett had been standing the tree against the wall, now she turned to Ashley with miserable eyes. "Oh, Ashley—you would have bungled it somehow. It was better just to do it myself." The disillusionment in her voice was crushing, and Ashley reeled back from the note in her tone. Scarlett seemed to remember herself, and straightened.

"I mean, I didn't mind getting it. I wanted to go. I was glad to do it. So you needn't worry. Oh, Melly, what are you crying for, now?" For Melly was weeping soundlessly, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Scarlett, it's a nice tree and I—I'm so grateful, but—but it isn't a thing like Christmas after all. There are no presents and—and—no music…"

Scarlett brushed the dirt from her hands, and sat down at the piano, which was missing the ivory from most of the keys. "We won't have any presents," she said. "And there's nothing I can do for that. But we can have music, while we trim the tree." She played a clamorous chord—the piano was badly out of tune—and sang, in her off-key soprano, the opening lines of the Wexford Carol:

"_With thankful heart and joyful mind, the shepherds went the babe to find_—Mammy, you help these girls and Ashley trim this tree. And Pork, _try_ and keep Pa from making a nuisance of himself."

"We can use these old portieres for decoration," Suellen was saying, and Scarlett called, suddenly, over her shoulder,

"No! Don't do that! We might need them for something else."

"Miss Ellen's po'tieres," murmured Mammy, ominously.

Scarlett continued paying, but Rhett could see her glance over her shoulder at Melanie's thin face, from time to time. He could not help but see that her eyes also followed Ashley. But for the first time, they did not seek him out of ardor. He realized that she was just checking, to make sure that all of them, were doing all right.

And there was no one checking to make sure that Scarlett, herself, was.

It was a side of his wife Rhett had never seen before. Caring about other people—_worrying_ over them. He felt shamed, for he had never known that things had been so difficult for her. She had spoken of it, sometimes, after their marriage—the hunger, the weariness, the fear—but his soul writhed, remembering his words in response. _There, there, honey_. As though she were only Bonnie, worried about monsters in the dark. He had never stopped to listen to her—to really listen. What if he had said, instead, _Scarlett, I will never let that happen to you, again_, and meant it? Would she have relaxed in her desperate quest for safety, security? Would she have had time to devote to kindness, and gentleness, in its place?

"I suppose you wanted to show me that I was wrong," Rhett said shortly to Melanie beside him. "Well—you've shown me."

"You haven't seen everything," Melanie told him, as Scarlett got up from the piano and slipped out to the verandah. "Let's follow her."

They followed Scarlett as she made her way down a dark path to the old Tara graveyard. She kept looking over her shoulder, back toward the house, to make sure she was alone. When she was quite sure she stepped toward a grave—there was no headstone, but a piece of wood scarred with the letters, E. O'H. For the second time that evening, Scarlett slumped to the ground, heedless of the dirt. She put her hand on the makeshift marker and she began to cry.

Rhett had never seen her cry before. Oh, yes—crocodile tears, angry wailings. But real tears—tears of true sorrow? No. At least: he had not thought he had. But Scarlett cried now, leaning her head against her mother's initials.

"Oh, Mother," she sobbed. "Everything is so hard, Mother. Pa isn't right, and the girls are no help. Mother, I am all alone. I think I'll always be alone. Ashley, Ashley—!" Rhett felt a shiver of revulsion go through him. He did not want to listen to Scarlett declare her love for another man.

But she continued, "Ashley is useless, Mother. I thought when he came back he'd lighten this weary load for me. But he can't—he can't! Nobody can."

She wept silently for a few moments, and then surprised him, again, by speaking his name: "Rhett! Rhett Butler! Why did you leave us here? Why did you even both saving us—if you were just going to bring us here to die?"

He wanted to go to her, and put a hand on her shaking shoulder. An anger bubbled up in his chest—but it was anger at himself. If he had known it would be so hard for her, he _would_ have stayed. Running off to join the army—it was something that he did for himself. Some perverse idealism, some romantic notion, some desire for adventure. Thinking that people would die, if he didn't. When other people had needed him—had very nearly died, because he _did_.

"Take me away from here," he said, harshly, to Melanie—the harshest he had ever spoken to her. "I don't want to see her like this. She wouldn't have wanted me to."—thinking of her green velvet gown, her brave hen-feathered hat, when she had visited him in jail. "Take me away, I say! Melanie—Spirit—whatever you are—I don't want to see the past anymore. I don't wish to!"

Melanie's touch was cool on his hand.

"Fine," she said. "Let us leave the past—and move on to the present."


	7. Chapter Seven

Rhett was surprised to find, as it was borne out of the mists before him, that he had missed the house on Peachtree street—that he had missed it very much. Oh, it was a horror of architecture, and it was decorated like the inside of a whorehouse—and not a very nice one, at that, he thought, with an imagined doff of his hat to Belle Watling and her elegant establishment. But this house held some of his happiest memories. The night Bonnie was born. Each of her precious milestones: first step, word, laugh, smile. For a moment Rhett looked up at the mansard roof and the hideous shingled towers, the jigsaw work on the porch banisters, and he smiled.

But then he thought that his unhappiest moments had also been here—Bonnie's death, Scarlett's fall, and her long recovery, the hateful things they had said to one another—and his smile faded.

The house was decked out for Christmas. Rhett was not surprised by it. He had driven by the house on his way into town the day before, and had cringed when he saw it. Scarlett had always made a fuss over the season, but this year she had outdone even her own past efforts. There was a tall white candle in every window; a giant wreath of holly and garish tinsel covered the entire door. Pine garlands had been wound around the columns. Through the diamond paned bay window, he could see that a magnificent spruce had been set up in the parlor, twinkling with smaller candle lights.

Not another house on the street had been decorated; people were much too poor for that kind of foolery. Rhett balled his fists inside his coat pocket, half-pitying and half-angry at his wife, when only a short while ago he had been so sorry for her, so tender toward her struggles. How could she bring shame on herself, again, again? What would be people think, with Bonnie dead only a year? But then—Scarlett had always loved frippery like this. He remembered the sixteen-year-old widow at the bazaar, tapping her feet and nodding her veiled head in time with the music. And Bonnie would have loved this—all of this. Perhaps it was Scarlett's way of staying close to her.

Melanie's hand was a light feather touch on his arm, an airy whisper. "Let's go in," she said. "And see how they're celebrating Christmas this year."

Her hand hesitated at the rope for the brass bell, before she remembered. "I suppose we can just go in." Rhett smiled again, despite himself. Trust Melanie not to forget her manners, even from beyond the grave.

The table in the large formal dining room had been set with five places, and Rhett's heart beat hard in his chest to see them. A table meant to seat fourteen—with the leaves, twenty-four. He had been so afraid he would see the place filled with Scarlett's carpetbagger friends that he was relieved to see it was only Ashley and the children who were seated with her. But then his heart turned over with pity—had Scarlett so few friends left? And Ashley, so haggard and gray and downtrodden, hardly looked like a comforting presence. His hair was thinning—he was skeletal—there were deep grooves running from his nose to his mouth. His shoulders slumped, defeated. The poor fellow, he looked like a kicked dog—

No! Rhett ground his teeth. He wouldn't feel sorry for _Ashley Wilkes_, who was sitting at the head of the table, _his _table, in Rhett's own chair. Damn the man, couldn't he ever learn his place? Rhett would show him—Rhett would tell him—his place _wasn't _with _his wife_!

Melanie's hand went to his arm, more firmly this time, as though she had summoned all her ghostly will to hold him back.

"We watch," she said. "Look."

Servants, whom Rhett did not recognize, came in to serve the meal and disappeared, soundlessly. For a while the only noise to break the silence was the chink of forks and knives against the china plates. Scarlett looked beautiful in a claret silk, with a sprig of holly in her hair, but her face was white and wan. She kept looking at the door. Perhaps she _had_ invited her trashy Yankee friends and they had snubbed her? But then Wade Hampton—grown incongruously broad-shouldered in the past year, and impossibly like Charles—spoke up, in a voice that was only just a baritone.

"He's not coming, Mother, so you can stop looking for him."

Scarlett seemed to come back to herself. She took a bite of ham, brought it to her mouth. "I wasn't expecting anybody," she said. "I was only wondering if it were a little cold in here. Davie, bring some more coal for the fire!"

Ella Lorena sat in her chair, her orangey hair tied back in an enormous bow. "I want Uncle Rhett," she said, in her small, wheedling tone. "Mother, you _promised_ he would come."

"I didn't promise." Scarlett's voice was sharp. "I only said I'd ask him…and not to get your hopes up…"

Wade pushed his chair back with a scraping sound. "You made him go away," he said, harshly, blinking back boyish tears, though he must be—Rhett calculated—_thirteen_ this year. "You sent him away—you could get him to come back."

Now it was Scarlett's turn to blink, and blink. "Wade Hampton, I can't," she said simply. "I can't. I asked, but he doesn't want to come."

"He doesn't want to—because you've been so horrible to him. Why did Uncle Rhett have to leave us? Uncle Rhett understood—Uncle Rhett cared about us. Why couldn't it have been—_you_?"

Scarlett leaned her head on her hand, covering her eyes. "Wade, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"I hate you, Mother! I wish it _had_ been you!"

"Ashley," breathed Scarlett to the stone-faced man. Her voice was desperate. "Ashley, please—do something."

"Wade, do not speak to your mother that way." Ashley's voice was mechanical, devoid of any emotion. "It is not the way a gentleman speaks. Apologize to her, please."

"I won't—and I don't care if I'm not a gentleman." The boy threw his napkin onto his plate in disgust, and stood. "The other boys don't treat me like I am, so why should I pretend to be?" He turned on his heel and fled from the room. His cousin Beau Wilkes—a thin boy, and paler and more sickly than Rhett remembered—got up and followed him slowly upstairs.

Ella was snuffling into her plate, her eyes and nose pink.

"Ella," Scarlett said, "Ella, don't cry. Wade Hampton will come back down in time for gingerbread. Beau will talk some sense into him."

"I'm not crying because of the gingerbread," Ella sniffed. "I miss Uncle Rhett, too, Mother. It isn't Christmas without him. Bonnie and Aunt Melly are gone—but Uncle Rhett should be here. Uncle Rhett loved me."

"God's nightgown, Ella! I love you, too," Scarlett said, honestly, and Rhett wanted to turn away at the pain her face. "I haven't always been good at—at showing it. But I'm trying—darling. I am."

The girl's thin shoulders shook as she wept into her plate. Rhett felt guilt wash over him.

"Damn it, I didn't think the children cared," he said.

"Why wouldn't they?" asked Melanie. "You are the only father either of them has ever known. Of course they would miss you in their lives."

"I didn't think—when I told Scarlett that I was leaving—about what it would do to them," Rhett admitted. "What's going to happen to them, Melly?"

Melanie smiled, a little sadly. "That's not for me to tell you," she said softly. "You must wait to find it out. Come on, Captain Butler—let's go upstairs and visit the boys."

They moved away from the light of the dining room, through the cold house, up the stairs to the library, where Beau was seated on the sofa. He was pale and thinner than Rhett remembered. "What's wrong with your boy, Melanie?"

"His health has never been quite right," she said, watching her son with a tender smile. "He was born so early—and his lungs have never been strong. The doctor thinks it may be consumption—but it isn't likely that anything will be done to help him. When you cut Scarlett off, you cut Beau off, too. She was paying for his books, and school, and riding lessons—yes, but she was also paying for his food, and his medicine, and his doctor's visits."

Rhett felt another uneasy roil of guilt. "It isn't my job to do what Ashley should be doing for his own son," he said, a little sharply.

Melanie, if she was offended, did not let it show. And perhaps she wasn't. She knew of her husband's limitations. "Ashley will never get over the war. It is his job—you're right—but he'll never be able to do it. Scarlett was willing—she promised me she would. But I don't know what she'll be able to do, in this recession, with the mill going so badly. Beau will sicken over the next year, without her intervention—by Christmas he will be here, with me."

"Melanie!" Rhett turned to face her. "Melanie—is it so? Is that what _will_ happen—or what _may_ happen? Is there any hope of changing it?"

"No," Melanie said, with a sad smile. "Not when the only person who could help my son is so set against hurting those who _would_ help him."

She turned back to the scene at hand. Wade was rummaging in Rhett's old desk. He came up with a pair of cigars, and an old silver lighter Rhett remembered putting there.

"Have one, General Lee?" he asked, cutting the top of one and lighting it, passing it to Beau, who coughed, his thin body wracked with the effort.

"No thank you, General Pickett," Beau said. "Wade—I wish you wouldn't smoke. Mother always promised she would get you a gold watch if you didn't drink, or use tobacco, until you were graduated from college."

"I'm not going to college," said Wade, sitting back in his chair and putting his feet up on the desk, as he had often seen Rhett do. "I'm going to go West—and make my fortune, like Uncle Rhett did."

"Oh, Wade! Don't say that! My mother wanted you to go, so badly, like your father did. And what will I do without you?"

Wade Hampton's face showed nakedly the bitterness he felt with the world. "Your mother is dead," he reminded his cousin. "And she was the only person who _did_ care. I thought Uncle Rhett might. But he doesn't. And Beau, you'll be better off without me." Wade swallowed, hard. "I'm just the trashy son of a trashy speculator. I—I'd be better off—everyone would—if I were dead."

He put his hand on the knob of another desk drawer—the thin one, where Rhett had always kept his dueling pistols, and the bullets for them. He did not open the drawer but Rhett saw plainly what he was thinking: that the pistols would always be there, if he needed them, to hurt another—or himself.

"Wade!" he cried, a rush of panic filling him. "Wade Hampton Hamilton! Don't even think of such a thing, you little fool."

Wade paused, the smoking cigar held halfway to his mouth. "Beau—did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Wade!" Rhett tried again. "WADE! Go downstairs to your mother—go _now_!"

Wade tamped the cigar out in the ashtray, looking spooked—as though he were listening to voices only he could hear. "Let's go downstairs," he said to Beau, quickly, as though he were afraid, "And see what Teena's got in the kitchen. My, I'm hungry—I didn't get enough to eat before."

When the boys had gone, Rhett sat down on the desk chair and mopped his brow with the silk handkerchief in his pocket. "Thank God," he muttered. "He's just being stupid, isn't he, Melly? He doesn't mean what he just said?"

"I don't know," said Melanie, tracing a pattern in the shiny marquetry of the desktop. "All I do know is that Wade feels that everyone who loved him has left him. If a boy is learning about himself, every day, a lesson like that can't teach him much."

"Dear God," Rhett spit, from between his clenched teeth, picking up the cigar Wade had left and lighting it, again. "I'll do something before I let that happen. I'll—"

He was interrupted as Scarlett and Ashley came into the room.

"Here it is!" Scarlett cried gaily, as she retrieved a small packet from the desktop. "Your present. Merry Christmas, Ashley dear."

Ashley smiled, a small smile, as he unwrapped the package in his hands. He pulled out a gold silk necktie, and held it up, to peer at it. Scarlett clapped her hands in delight.

"Do you remember, Ashley? The silk sash I gave to you, for Christmas, during the war?"

"Yes," he said. "This is very much like that one. Thank you, Scarlett. How do you think of these things?"

She lowered her eyes, a little embarrassed. "It was—the last Christmas—that I remember you being happy," she said, looking up to meet his gaze. "Oh, Ashley, you _aren't_ happy now, and I'm trying so hard to make it so you _can_ be. When you smiled just then, it was like the sun coming out for me. I'd give you a hundred—a thousand—neckties, if you would only smile more."

She loves him, Rhett thought, a flame of jealousy running through him. She'll kiss him now—but Scarlett only picked up Ashley's thin hand in both of hers, and squeezed it, companionably.

The thought came to Rhett, then, that perhaps Ashley Wilkes and his wife were lovers—_were_, or had been, already, for some time. They lived so close—they spent all day together—and she had loved him, and he had wanted her, for so long. None of this was new knowledge—and yet the raw feeling of betrayal that went through him was so new. To think of Wilkes's silvering head bent over his wife's body, with his lips traveling the line of her collarbone, her neck—he made his hands into fists. Of course it was so. Scarlett's gesture—her pressing his hand—it was the kind of gesture that was born of a long intimacy.

Or maybe, said a voice in Rhett's head, a long friendship.

He waved the voice away. Scarlett was tying the gold silk around Ashley's neck.

"There," she said. "It suits you—it's perfect and I'm glad I got it. And _don't_ go on this year about how you haven't anything for me. The pleasure is in the giving, Mother used to say to me, and I'm learning that it's true."

Rhett turned his attention to Ashley. There was something struggling in the man's face—duty, with revulsion? Gratitude with sorrow? In any event, it was obvious he was torn. But then, all at once, he seemed to make his mind up. Rhett saw it in his face. His shoulders went down in defeat even as his chin went up in determination.

"Scarlett," Ashley said softly, and he reached into his pocket. "Scarlett—I do have something for you." He drew out a little velvet box, which he opened, to reveal a small diamond ring, in a delicate gold setting.

"Why, that's Melanie's ring! The one she inherited from her mother. Ashley, you shouldn't give it to me. It belongs by rights to Beau—he'll give it to his wife, one day."

"I want to give it you," said Ashley, hurriedly, stubbornly—and a little wearily, defeatedly. "You do—so—much for me and Beau, Scarlett. We would both lack so many things if you did not find a way to get them for us. I must be a very poor sort of man, Scarlett—but I am grateful—and I know that there is something you want from me, have always wanted, and I would like to give it."

"Ashley, what are you saying?" cried Scarlett, her eyes locked on his pale face.

Rhett watched Ashley closely. His face was pained. He looked like a man attending his own execution and yet he plowed on. He held out the little ring, and he knelt down before Rhett's wife.

"Scarlett," said Ashley Wilkes flatly—oh, so flatly! "My dear, I love you. Would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?"


	8. Chapter Eight

"No!" Rhett exploded, before either of them could speak. "No, Scarlett!" He searched her stricken face. Her eyes went from the ring, to Ashley. Back. Back. "God damn it! Tell him you won't. You can't! You're not divorced! And I'll never give you a divorce if you say yes!"

Melanie made a small laughing sound, behind him. "Do you really think you would need to _give_ her a divorce?" she asked, gently. "Scarlett has powerful friends—even if you don't like them, they are powerful. And everyone in Atlanta knows you have deserted her. She could sue you for abandonment."

"Damn them both," Rhett growled. "Damn them to hell! I'll never let it happen. Never!"

Melanie's gentle brown eyes were quizzical. "Why do you care?" she asked him. "_You_ left Scarlett. She wanted you to stay. Why do you care if she moves on, too?"

Rhett buried his head in his hands. He could not answer Melanie, because he did not know himself. Could it be that he still loved Scarlett—loved her madly, desperately, with the same passion with which he had always loved her?

"No," he said, his voice muffled. "She's a witch, and I don't love her. I hate her."

Melanie's touch was soothing on his back. "We always like to think we hate the ones who hurt us."

Hurt him? By God, she had! Hurt him terribly. For he had loved her—loved her with a true heart. Always, always she had loved another, while he had wanted only her. When she did not love him, he had been that small boy again, crying for his loss. A small boy's tears welled in Rhett's eyes, his throat. It was a relief. Who cared if anybody saw? It was only Melanie to see, and Melanie understood.

"I do," she murmured, hearing his thoughts. "Captain Butler—I do understand. But do _you_?"

Besides the voices of the onlookers, it had been very quiet in the library for some time. Rhett lifted his head and turned his attention back to the players—Scarlett and Ashley, standing very still in the center of the room.

"Scarlett?" asked Ashley, rising to his feet. He repeated himself: "Scarlett, you _will_ marry me, when you are free?"

She had the little ring box in her hands, was turning it over and over. Rhett scrutinized her face. He could see every thought that passed through her head plainly in her eyes. Ashley—at last! But did she want him? She was uncertain: he saw that. She looked toward the dauguerrotype on the wall—Rhett's own dark face—fleetingly. His heart leapt up? Could it be that she was telling the truth when she said she loved him? She looked away just as quickly, before he could seek the truth in her face. Ashley—she studied him, and Rhett understood that though she may have wanted him once, the Ashley before her was a stranger to her. She did not know this man—did not want _him_. And yet—was it better than being alone? Her features screwed up in distaste—she steadied them. And Rhett saw that Scarlett knew what Ashley was offering of himself, must not let her indecision—her revulsion?—show.

"I am flattered by your attentions," she recited primly, from some long ago primer she had been made to memorize, "But," abandoning it, "Oh, Ashley, I don't know! It's all happening so fast. Can I—can I think it over—and tell you—some other time? Tomorrow, maybe?" She squeezed her eyes shut, and Rhett knew she was thinking, _I'll think about it tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day_.

Ashley looked a little shocked—and could it be?—a little angry. But ultimately relieved. He dropped a chaste kiss on Scarlett's brow and Rhett knew suddenly that he had been wrong to suppose them lovers. For one, it would mean Wilkes would have to actually _do_ something.

"Yes—think it over," Ashley told Rhett's wife. "Tell me your answer another time. For now, Beau and I should be going home, I think."

Rhett and Melanie followed them out, watched as Scarlett waved them off. She closed the door against the cold and wandered aimlessly though the now-silent house. In the parlor, she flicked a bit of dust from the sofa cushions. She stopped to straighten a candlestick on the dining room table, spilling wax across the polished wood, where it beaded and hardened in and instant. She had gotten some on her finger and she cried out, and then raised her hand to her mouth. Pushed both hands through her black hair.

Moved to the sideboard, where she kept the liquor, in glass decanters.

Her hand hovered over the whisky. Rhett watched her intently. She had told him, last time he had seen her, in the spring, that she had stopped all that. Had she been lying? Was this habit, or only a moment's weakness. She took the plug from the decanter and held it. Her hand went out, to lift the bottle, to pour the amber liquid into a glass.

And then Scarlett seemed to come to herself. She hurled the bottle stopper to the floor, where it shattered. She pushed the bottle roughly away, with a short cry.

Rhett was proud of her. "Good girl," he said, wishing she could hear him.

He heard her climb the stairs, and he followed, watching as she went into the room, closing the door behind her.

He crossed the hallway and stood by the door of his old room, the room he had shared with Bonnie. Was it only his imagination, or could he heard a sweet voice singing on the other side of it? But no—it couldn't be—he had locked this door before he left and he alone had the only key. He turned to Melanie as she laid a hand on his arm.

"Captain Butler," she said. She seemed to be growing faint, and a little transparent. "I'll have to leave you soon. I've shown you all I can."

"But we can't leave now! I need to know what the hell Scarlett's going to do."

"Someone else will show you," she said, looking strangely distracted—as if there was a bell ringing somewhere, but only she could hear it. "I must go."

He nodded, strangely sad. He had missed Melanie, and he knew now that she had been very dear to him. "Will I see you again?"

"I don't know," she said slowly. "Oh—I think so. If—if—everything goes right. And I'll see you. I'll visit you often." She squeezed his hand.

"Melly," Rhett said to her, "You were too good for this world. If I was a wise man, I would have known that I needed a woman like you the first time I saw you, at Twelve Oaks. I would have stolen you away from Ashley Wilkes, and ravished you, and made you my wife. Oh, I'm sorry—I didn't mean to make you blush," for Melanie was, now, surely as a star.

"You couldn't have 'stolen' me," she said, shyly, "But Captain Butler! I always thought you were better than people gave you credit for being—and—and rather dashing, if you must know."

Rhett bent his head and kissed her quickly and fleetingly on the lips. She was like a little bird in his arms—frail, and scared—but she did not pull away.

She smiled up at him. The noise behind the bedroom door was growing louder—yes, it was a girl's voice, picking out a sweet tune. "Go in," Melanie said. "There is someone waiting for you. Goodbye—Rhett."

"Goodbye, Melly," he said. She picked up her skirts, and started for the stairs. In an instant she was gone.

Rhett put his hand on the doorknob, expecting it to be locked. It wasn't. It turned easily in his hands. He opened the door wide—wider. "What the…?" he murmured, seeing his old bedchamber transformed. It was a young girl's room, now—a tall canopy bed, plush carpeting, pink drapes.

Before him, at a vanity table, a young girl—fourteen or fifteen years old?—was sitting with her back to him, brushing her black hair in the mirror. She turned as he came into the room, and his breath caught in his throat. She had a little triangular face, sharp chin, high brow, red lips. She was very beautiful. She was—

"Scarlett?" he asked, in some confusion, and the girl smiled fondly.

"No, Daddy," she chided him gently. "Don't you know me? It's me. It's your Bonnie Blue."


	9. Chapter Nine

For a moment, Rhett just watched the young woman before him. Could this truly be his little girl? Is this how Bonnie would have looked, if she had lived to grow up?

And was God really so good as to let him get a glimpse of her, if it was?

Very little of the baby Bonnie remained in her face. Her features were Scarlett's—Scarlett's to the life—save her fine browned skin, which was Rhett's, and her strikingly blue eyes, which were hers alone. The girl smiled, and there was that gap he remembered, slight, between her two front teeth. She was altogether charming and full of spirit as he remembered, but there was a placidity to her bearing now that she had not had time to grow into in life. She sat like a queen, her blue velvet skirts—just the same color as her eyes—spread out around her. Rhett made a low choking sound in his throat. He wanted to believe—and yet he couldn't, couldn't.

As if Bonnie could sense his unease, she said, in a low, meaningful tone,

"Daddy—where you been?"

It was so like she used to ask of him that Rhett felt, quite despite himself, his eyes well with tears. He crossed to her, where she sat, and took her dear little face in his hands, studying it, memorizing it, for the long dark time that should follow whenever this moment was over.

"Hunting for a rabbit skin," he murmured, his arms tight around her. "To wrap my little Bonnie in."

Father and daughter embraced a long while. When Rhett pulled back his eyes were bleary, and his face, he could feel, was wet with tears.

"You're so changed, Bonnie," he told her, with awe in his voice. "You're so much older. I never thought I'd see you as a grown-up girl."

Bonnie smiled, and tossed her black curls. "Beyond there is no age," she said. "Sometimes I am a baby, still, Daddy—sometimes I am a very old woman. But this is the age I like best. I think I would have liked—very much—to be a young, pretty girl. To be _your_ young, pretty girl."

Rhett could hardly speak through the lump in his throat. "I would have liked that, too. How—how are you, Bonnie? Are you—well—there? Is it a nice—place, 'Beyond?'"

"Oh, yes," she breathed. "It is the nicest place of all." She flicked her skirts, and Rhett saw that what he had taken for an ordinary gown was instead a riding habit. "I have a snow-white charger and I ride all the time—I can go fast as the wind and high as the moon. And there are never any accidents."

"I'm glad, darling," Rhett said. "Oh, honey, I'm so glad. Bonnie—Bonnie—I've blamed myself for what happened to you. If I hadn't been so heedless—perhaps you would be alive, now. Perhaps you would get to be this young pretty girl, one day—really get to be her."

"Everyone blames themselves for what happened to me," said Bonnie, a mournful note in her bright tone. "You do—and Mother does."

"No," Rhett said. He was remembering Scarlett's words to him, as Dr. Meade bent over Bonnie's crumpled form, so still and white on the bed. _You killed my baby. You killed her_. "Your mother certainly does not blame herself."

"Doesn't she?" Bonnie said, slanting her eyes at him.

"I am sure she doesn't," Rhett said, but as he was saying it, he was suddenly unsure. He remembered so little from those days after Bonnie had died, but he did remember, like something in a dream, hearing Scarlett's wails filter down the hallway from her room as he held Bonnie's cooling body in his arms. _I couldn't stop her. I couldn't stop her in time. What have I done, Melanie? What have I done?_

"She _shouldn't_ blame herself," Rhett said, gruffly. "I let you ride too fast, Bonnie. I encouraged you to be reckless."

Bonnie had taken his face in her hands.

"Nobody had to encourage me to be reckless," she said, pityingly. "Poor Daddy—to blame yourself. For what? I lived only a short while, yes—but my life was the happiest a girl could ever have."

Rhett buried his face in her skirts and let her pet his hair. "Daddy—dear Daddy." But then she stopped her stroking, and Rhett lifted his face to meet her worried eyes.

"What's wrong, darling? Are you happy, Bonnie? Is—is there such a thing as happiness for you?"

"I'm happy sometimes," she said. "But Daddy—I'm not happy at what's happened with you and Mother. It breaks my heart, darling—what you've done."

"What I've done, Bonnie?"

"Yes—leaving Mother all by herself, just at the time she needed you most."

"Your Mother doesn't need anybody but herself."

"Oh, but she _does_," Bonnie told him. "And you need her, too, Daddy."

Rhett did not know how to explain to her. He was used to talking to Bonnie as a little girl, and found he could not break the habit, no matter how old she appeared before him. "There wasn't enough love left," he said, haltingly. "Not for us, Bonnie. Not after you went."

She laughed, a tinkling sound, and turned back to her mirror. Rhett followed her gaze, but instead of her reflection, he saw a scene within the mirror, at first still like a painting. But then the scene came to life, and grew larger, and stronger, in the glass. He was looking at the Peachtree street parlor, in miniature, in Bonnie's mirror. Decked out for Christmas, some other Christmas, with the lights blazing, and everything so merry and bright that it _must_ be real. Ella was sitting at the piano, plinking away and warbling in a surprisingly rich voice, while somewhere else close by Wade was singing, too.

Scarlett appeared, looking plumper and happier than she had been when he had seen her before. She was dressed fashionably, but demurely, her hair not frizzled and crimped but drawn back in a low sleek knot at the nape of her neck. Rhett heard his own voice, calling her name, and a second later, he appeared next to Scarlett in the scene.

"There you are!" cried Scarlett, catching sight of him.

Rhett crossed to his wife and he kissed her, and she turned to reveal a small little girl in her arms. Rhett drew in his breath to see her. She was so like Bonnie, except her hair was red—the very shade his own mother's had been. Rhett-in-the-glass kissed the little girl. "Daddy, where you been?" she lisped, in a voice so like Bonnie's, except it was her own. "Hunting for a lambie skin, to wrap my little _Melly_ in…"

Rhett jerked forward, impulsively, to touch the image, but it disappeared, and the glass reflected only his own stunned face.

"Bonnie," he whispered, shocked, horrified, enthralled. "Bonnie—what was that? _What was it?_"

"You say there's not enough love," Bonnie said, in her bell-like voice. "There is enough so that what you saw _could_ be—if you would only go and find it."

"You're playing tricks on me, Bonnie," Rhett reproached her. "It isn't very nice."

The girl shrugged, and picked up her hairbrush again. "Would you like to see another scene?" she asked him. "You don't want to see what _can_ be—would you like to see what _will_ be, if you do not change your course?"

Without waiting for an answer, she turned back to the mirror. The parlor at Peachtree street, again—but this time it was Scarlett and Ashley he saw, very small, in the glass.

"Behold Christmas future," said Bonnie, as the mirror came to life again.


	10. Chapter Ten

In this new scene, the Peachtree street parlor was changed from its last iteration. The furnishings were not so well-kept, and everything looked a little rough around the edges. Bonnie had said 'Christmas future?'—but there was no sign of Christmas in this shabby chamber. Even Scarlett's gown—the claret one she had been wearing in Melanie's vision—was fraying at the edges. What had happened to her, to make her into such a dowd? She raised her hands and a glimmer of gold flashed on her left hand and Rhett realized: it was not the ostentatious emerald he had given her to. It was Ashley's ring—Scarlett was Ashley's wife, now. _Mrs. Wilkes, at last_, he thought, nastily. _I hope you're happy, Scarlett. It's what you've always wanted_.

But Scarlett did not look happy, and a thrill of cruel delight went through Rhett at that realization. And Ashley—he did not look the picture of married bliss, either. He was seated on the sofa with his head in his hands. Scarlett was striding in front of him, looking very angry indeed.

"You forbid me to work?" she was saying, in a loud voice. "God's nightgown, Ashley! Do you _like_ being poor? We've hardly enough to live on since the divorce—would you like us to have to sell this house? And where will we live? Aunt Pitty won't take us in. She wants nothing to do with you since you married me. India has turned her—we haven't a friend left in the world. Where will we go for help, Ashley? Are _you_ going to take care of us?"

Her voice was not meant to be harsh, but the panic, the disgust, in it was evident. Ashley lifted his head from his thin hands to stare at Scarlett balefully.

"You will never let me forget my failings, Scarlett," he murmured, in a beaten voice. "You are a very hard woman to please."

"Hard to please me?" she said, in a wondering tone. "Oh, Ashley—it isn't about _me_! I wouldn't care if I had to live in a box. Think of Beau—think of how sick he is! Why, Ashley—he'll die if I don't find a way to get enough money for the doctor. I don't get maintenance from Rhett since I was married to you, and _you_ won't let me work. Great balls of fire! You'll let your _own son_ die to keep your silly pride intact? What kind of father are you?"

Ashley dropped his grizzled head back into his hands. "I am a very poor father," he said. "And a very poor husband—God help me. And God help you, for marrying me. At least there is the insurance policy on my life. Uncle Henry Hamilton got it for me—it's worth so much, when I am worth so little. Oh, Scarlett, Scarlett—if only I could die and you be free of me!"

But Scarlett was in no mood for a pity party. Her panic was mounting; it showed in the flutter of her hands, helpless white birds falling, falling, the agitated swish of her tattered skirts. "I made a promise to Melly that I'd take care of Beau—take care of him always. What will Melly _think_ if I let him die, Ashley? I told her I'd take care of you, that you weren't strong—and you won't let me care for you. Oh, Ashley, if Rhett takes this house from us, too, don't you see we'll be homeless? We have nowhere to go—even Tara is lost to us, now. Beau will die in the streets—he'll die like a dog, in the streets!"

At this, Rhett sat up. Tara—what had happened to Tara? How had Scarlett let it slip through her fingers: the thing she loved most in the world?

"She came to you," Bonnie explained without looking at her father. "For help. You took a mortgage on the property —and then you foreclosed. You intended to do it from the start, Daddy. But you didn't let her see that—you let her think you would help her. You wanted to punish her, for marrying Uncle Ashley."

Rhett was angry, now. Never before had Bonnie spoken to him with such reproach. "I would never do that," he swore. "I would never do a thing like that!"

"But haven't you?" Bonnie turned to face him, as the scene in the mirror played on. "You had Uncle Henry cut her off, because she was helping Ashley. It's not such a large step from that to this."

Rhett felt the beginnings of a cold sweat start along his spine. He had no pretensions to goodness, or kindness—gentlemanliness—but at the same time, he did not want to think he could ever cast a sick boy, a penniless family, out into the street.

"Bonnie," he implored her. "Bonnie—you said this is what _will_ be. Is it? Is there any hope of changing it?"

She looked at him a moment longer, and turned back to her mirror, as the scene changed.

Beau Wilkes—older, thinner, haggard-looking as his father, with lips tinged alarmingly blue, was reclining on a bed, white as the sheets he lay upon. Next to him sat a plump young man dressed in the latest fashion, his hair sleek, his mouth drawn up in a cutting smirk. There was something familiar about him, and Rhett felt he should recognize him, but didn't.

"General Pickett," Beau whispered. "It's good to see you, Wade."

Wade! Rhett's mouth hung agape. This coddled, dandyish boy—Wade Hampton Hamilton? He turned to Bonnie, speechless.

"Wade kept good on his promise," she said. "He went West, and made his fortune—just like you did, once. He's tried to mold himself exactly in your image, Daddy—'the very picture of his Uncle Rhett.' Wade is a very rich man, now. Quite as rich as you ever were."

"Why doesn't _he_ help his cousin, then?" asked Rhett, querulously.

As if answering his question, the Wade in the mirror spoke. "Mother said you were sick, Beau," he said shortly, refusing to use the greeting of their childhood. "You look all right to me."

All right? When the boy was wasting away? Rhett watched as Wade sat back in the chair by the sickbed, and lit a cigar, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else than with the boy he had once loved as a brother.

"I'm not—well—Wade, but I'm trying to get better."

"Try a little harder?" suggested Wade with a roguish smile. His teeth flashed below a curling moustache—Wade, with a moustache! And speaking so cruelly! "Nobody likes a layabout, Beau. But I don't fault you for your habits—your pa has never amounted to much, I expect you learned it from him. A lot of people just don't like good hard work, and will do anything to get out of it."

"Wade!" A spasm of coughing wracked Beau's body. "I won't—let you—say such things about—my father."

"Uncle Ashley has freeloaded off my mother for years," said Wade pitilessly. "And mother doesn't have the sense God gave a goose when it comes to financial affairs. She put every bit of it into Tara—that great while elephant."

"That great white elephant"—where had Rhett heard those words before? He did not have time to think; Wade was speaking again.

"I won't give them a penny anymore—I won't support idlers. And you'd better not be one, Beau."

"Wade—I—intend—to get a job studying law—once I am better," Beau protested, faintly. "If I could get better, if I only _could_…"

"That's your way of asking me for money, isn't it?" Wade wondered. "Your polite, gentlemanly way of asking. Not _too_ polite to ask, though. You all think you can come running to me since Uncle Rhett's cut you off for good, at last. Not that I blame him! He doesn't like hangers-on anymore than I do. Well!" The man that was _not _the boy Rhett knew reached into his vest pocket and drew out a roll of paper bills in a silver money clip. "I'll help you this last time, Beau—out of the goodness of my heart—but this is the last time, hear and understand?" He scattered a few bills on the floor, just out of the sick boy's reach, turned on his well-polished heel, and stormed from the room.

"Wade would never treat Beau like that," Rhett whispered. "Not the Wade I know."

"Wade has changed," sighed Bonnie. "He has tried every way he knows to get your approval, Daddy. He always loved you very much. But you hadn't time for him anymore, and so he had to try harder and harder. Finally he lost sight of the boy he wanted to be—and he became _you_."

"But was I ever that cruel?" Rhett wondered.

"Only to the ones you loved," answered Bonnie.


	11. Chapter Eleven

Rhett watched as his daughter picked up her hairbrush again, and began running it through her black curls. In a low voice she sang a song Rhett did not know, the song she had been singing when he had first come into the room to see her. A strange, haunting tune—how could she know it?

_Full many a bird did wake and fly  
Curoo, curoo, curoo  
Full many a bird did wake and fly  
To the manger bed with a wandering cry  
On Christmas day in the morning  
Curoo, curoo, curoo._

He felt that she was slipping from him, and he did not want her to go. Her mirror was blank now, and he saw his own face as he leaned forward to take her head in his hands, and turn it back to him.

"Bonnie," he said. "Bonnie, you never answered me. Bonnie…these things you've shown me…they won't necessarily happen, will they? If—if something was to change—it would never come to pass. Bonnie, am I right? Am I, darling?"

"There are many times in our lives when we may choose the right thing," she said cryptically. "But ah! How many times we don't!"

"But surely—surely you're painting things a little strongly? I can't be the linchpin that holds so many people from the brink. It can't _all_ be because of me. And no one can blame me for not wanting anything to do with Scarlett anymore. She treated me abominably—everyone knows she did. No one could blame me for wanting to be happy?"

"It's not happiness you're looking for," said Bonnie. "It's something darker. And it will give you nothing but sorrow, the longer you pursue it."

Rhett looked back to the mirror, certain that its depths would begin to swirl again. But as he watched, the mirror dissipated, and the pretty furnishings of Bonnie's room faded away. They were no longer in a young girl's bedchamber—they were in a strange room he did not recognize, full of people. It was Christmas, some other Christmas-yet-to-come, but nobody seemed to be in the mood for it. Here and there Rhett recognized faces of people he knew: Mrs. Merriweather, gray-haired and wizened; the Meades, much as he remembered them; Rene and Maybelle Picard; Tommy Wellburn. The mood was subdued, and people were talking, and across the room, Aunt Pitty Hamilton was weeping copiously into a handkerchief. He was not alarmed by her tears. Pittypat Hamilton was always weeping over something.

"I can't believe he's gone," she was saying, through her tears. "Scarlett," she called out, across the throng, "Scarlett Wilkes! Oh! I bet you wish you'd been nicer to him now. Poor fellow—poor fellow."

"Who died?" Rhett asked Bonnie, with him on the fringes of the crowd. He felt a prickle of unease at not knowing. "Bonnie—who died? Is it Beau? Is it little Beau Wilkes?" But nobody could ever have accused Scarlett of not caring for Beau.

Bonnie said nothing, but propped her head in her hands, watching the scene with a soft, sad smile.

Scarlett, in her black dress, looked stricken but did not reply. Dr. Meade, though, turned to Pittypat and said, quite sharply,

"That's enough, Pitty. Lord knows I haven't too many good things to say about Scarlett, but you can hardly say it's her fault. It was a suicide, after all."

"Oh, God," Rhett groaned. "Is it Ashley? The insurance money he spoke of—suicide—oh, Bonnie, I don't like the man, but I didn't want him to die. And to die, that way, by his own hand!"

"I don't blame him for doing it," said Mrs. Meade, stepping forward to join her husband. "He should have done it years ago. And it doesn't surprise me a bit that he did it, at last. When you go through your life in the way he did—well. It's not much of a life, to me."

"Some people are born with no future," remarked Rene Picard to Tommy Wellburn. "They just muddle along in the here and now until it's time to go. He'd been drinking when he did it, everybody says—but I think he knew he'd finally reached the end of his rope."

Rhett sat back on his heels, in shock. Had life finally gotten the better of Ashley Wilkes? Ashley muddling along—yes—but Ashley, drunk? Drunk enough—to do that?

"His last thought was for the money," Rhett heard someone say, with a nasty snicker. "Well—I bet he found he couldn't take it with him, in the end!"

"We're well rid of him," Tommy Wellburn agreed. "When I think of how we took him into our fold, once, and how he betrayed us—good riddance is what I say."

Rhett was aghast. Could Ashley have fallen—fallen so far? Had he become like Scarlett, in the end? Turned to money, betrayed his friends? Had she corrupted him, finally—after years of trying, and made his noble spirit into something baser—like her own? Rhett found Scarlett with his eyes, and his heart pounded to see how lost and hopeless she looked, in her black taffeta. She must have loved Ashley very much—more than she had ever thought she might love Rhett, himself.

"Oh, stop!" she cried to the crowd, and Rhett saw her eyes were pink from weeping. "All of you—a man is dead, and you stand around speaking so ill of him, when he can't do anything about it. A man I loved! How can you do it? And it's Christmas—Christmas! Oh, it's too nasty—and I _loved_ him."

"A little late to find that out," someone muttered. Rhett cocked his head. Late? When everyone knew Scarlett had loved Ashley Wilkes her whole life?

But Scarlett stood firm. "Yes—I was a fool for many years." Rhett's heart squeezed again. Did she mean that she had been a fool when she had married him? The way things had turned out, he didn't blame her. But still—it hurt him. Yes, it did! And it hurt him that she loved Wilkes, still, when he was dead. Scarlett pressed a hand to her mouth and then faced the crowd again. She was a tired woman, grieving, beaten down, but she was brave, too. Rhett saw that now, and he realized: Scarlett had always been brave.

"You only saw his failures," she said. "You all only cared about his shortcomings. But he was good—he was good to my children—and he _wanted_ to be good to me, sometimes, but I kept him away. He was a hero in the war—everybody says he was. And when I think how he drove me and Melly all the way to Tara, the night Atlanta burned…"

With a jolt, Rhett came fully into himself. The night that—the night Atlanta burned? But Ashley Wilkes had not driven Scarlett and Melanie from the city. _Rhett_ had driven them.

"Bonnie!" he cried, turning to his daughter. "Bonnie—it's _not_ Ashley who died—Bonnie? Bonnie! Where are you?"

The girl had disappeared. "Bonnie!" Rhett shouted. "Bonnie, come back!"

But she did not come back, and the scene around him vanished, person by person evaporating into a white mist that swirled and swirled. Scarlett's face was the last to go, and in a panic, Rhett reached for her. Her green eyes were right there, before him, and then Rhett was stumbling, stumbling through the darkness, but she was gone.


	12. Chapter Twelve

A/N: Thanks for all the reviews! There are two more chapters to go, and I am going to post them on December 23 and 24. So be sure to check back here to see what happens!

* * *

The mist rose up around him, enveloped him—he could not breathe—and then, at once, it fell away from him, to the frozen ground, where it formed a ghostly layer, whispering around his feet, out in all directions, as far as they eye could see. There were staunch black shapes rising up out of the ground, and Rhett stumbled over one, and fell. He could not find his feet under him, to rise again. He put his hands against a rough, granite surface of a stone—

—and then he stopped, for he knew where he was now, and what it was he was scrabbling again. It was a graveyard, a place he had passed many times but a place he had never dared set foot in, himself. It was the graveyard where they had buried Bonnie, that cold place they had taken her that day they had taken her from him, for the last time. He had never come to her funeral, never seen her grave, until now. But this was her stone, he was holding in his hands. He crawled around to face her name. EUGENIE VICTORIA BUTLER, 1869-1873.

Below that was one word: BELOVED.

He had called out for Bonnie and she had brought him here, to the place where she was. He was a fool. He had wanted Bonnie in the flesh, but Bonnie was below the ground, now, mouldering. The Bonnie of just a few moments ago had been an illusion, no more solid than the mist swirling about her tomb. All the tumult of the night caught up with Rhett at last. The love—the loss—the regret, the anger—he leaned his head against his daughter's stone, and his shoulders wracked. He did not know why they should, at first—but then he felt the wetness on his cheeks.

He was crying. Rhett Butler was crying—he could not remember the last time he had cried.

The clouds in the milky sky parted, and the light from the cold, pale moon shone down on the eerie landscape. A little ways off from Bonnie's grave there was a raw, gaping hole in the earth, and a tall, forbidding figure in whirling black robes stood looking down into it. Rhett could not see its face, but he knew it for a spectre. He did not want to go to it, but his feet were bearing him up, at last, and toward it, as though his head had no say in the matter. He went slowly, like a child to a terrible punishment, to the hole in the earth where the figure stood. A gaping maw—a fresh grave.

The figure raised its head and looked at Rhett full on. And—and he _recognized _it! Those thin lips, tucked up in such a cruel smile. The black moustache, the small, cold eyes. Rhett had seen that face look at him so a thousand times, in life, and each time he had seen it he had trembled, but never with so much fear, as now. For this face had been gone from him for thirty years. He had seen it, lifeless—he had seen the casket lid closed over it, as it was taken from him, forever—so he had thought.

"Father!" he breathed, "Oh, no—no!"

Robert Butler did not speak. He did not move but all the same he seemed to gather his robes around him and stand even taller. Or maybe it was that Rhett suddenly felt so small. He felt like the powerless, fearful child he had once been, had never expected to be again. Rhett's father showed no sign of even noticing him, save training its cold eyes fully on his son's shaking form. He looked from his son's face to the black abyss of the grave in front of him. And back. There was something, Rhett understood, that pleased him about this grave very much. He could see it in his face.

"Who is buried here?" Rhett asked harshly, his fear making a rasp of his voice. "Or who _is _to be buried here—whose grave is this, Father?"

The man in black inclined his head toward the stone at the head of the grave. It was made of finest marble, a grand, imposing monument. There was something pleasing about its shape, as if it had been sculpted by capable hands, but Rhett hardly noticed it.

_For the name on the stone was his_.

RHETT KINNICUT BUTLER.

And the date on the stone—the date of death—was Christmas, 1874.

Tomorrow.

_I'll think about that tomorrow—tomorrow is another day_.

Rhett felt a surge of fear so strong that he nearly retched. In his life, he had faced prospectors, pirates, and Yankees—but he had never been afraid, and he realized now that it was because he had never _really_ believed that he would ever die. Who can ever really conceive of such a thing as their soul leaving their body, and their body placed under the ground, to turn to earth? He had seen a strange calmness come over the dying—he had seen people riddled with disease and bleeding from mortal wounds who calmly protested that they were fine, would be fine. Because they could not believe it. Oh, so many times—after Bonnie, after Scarlett—he had wished for death to come, and now he realized that it was not death he wished for. He had only wished for respite. Not this cruel, final severing of the bond!

"No," he said, falling to his knees. "No, no! It can't be true—it can't." For he saw now that he had never really begun to live.

All his life he had put a half-heart into living. He had thought it was what he wanted. But faced with the end, he only wanted the beginning back again. He wanted to feel the wind on his cheeks. He wanted to be in a fresh, untouched place. All of life at his feet, waiting to be trod upon!

He wanted Scarlett, that day she had looked at Twelve Oaks, when he had first seen her, so unused to life, and smiling. Yes—yes—he wanted that! Oh, he wanted it back—he wanted it!

Rhett lifted his face to his father's. "How—how did I die?"

The spectre spoke for the first time. "You died like any other man," it rasped. "Alone."

Alone—yes—because death was a thing that you must do yourself. But then: Rhett thought of the gathering at Peachtree street, talking of his death so calmly, with such obvious relief. Had there been anybody with him, when it happened? To help him out of life? Good Lord—had anybody thought to even _look_ for him, when he did not appear in the places he was meant to be?

Had—_would_—anybody come to his grave, to mourn him?

He thought of Scarlett, and knew that she, alone, out of everyone, would be looking for him. She, alone, would care. And she would come here, to this place, and perhaps kneel down before it, as he was doing now. She would run her fingers over his name. On Bonnie's tomb it said BELOVED. If anybody was to put that word on his grave, it would be Scarlett. Oh, she loved him—he had seen it—it was not an act! He thought of her white, peaked little face, and he knew that he did not want to be the reason for her tearful eyes.

Not when he had already caused her so much pain.

"Father!" Rhett turned to the grim figure, and grasped at the hem of its garment. "It doesn't have to happen this way? Does it? I'll be better. I'll _change_. It can't be too late—it can't! I'll go to Uncle Henry tomorrow and get him to put Scarlett back on my account. I'll go and see the children, more. I'll send Wade to college—I'll help Beau, I'll even help Ashley."

"Too late!" the figure rumbled, trying to shake him off.

Rhett felt his body prickle with a cold sweat. "I'll do more than that! Aunt Pitty—India Wilkes, even—Tara, yes, Tara. I'll give Scarlett all she wants for Tara. I'll let her marry Ashley if she wants it! I'll give Mrs. Meade whatever she needs for the Widows and Orphans! Scarlett—whatever she wants—"

"Too late!" boomed the figure, again.

"No! No! I—I'll go to Scarlett. I'll ask her to take me back! I'll beg her forgiveness—I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I used her terribly. She was like a toy to me. I played with her, and then I tired of her, and I threw her aside. It won't be like that, ever again! I'll let her love me—I know she does—for I love her, too! We'll be a family, a real family, in a way we never were. Oh, _please_! Me and Scarlett and Wade and Ella—and whatever children that want to come to us, after. I'll remember the lessons I learned here, tonight! I—I'll keep Christmas in my heart, all through the year! The _true_ meaning: love, and hope, and kindness, always, always!"

The figure stepped closer to Rhett, and closer. The smile on its face had widened. "Too late," said his father. "Too late, my boy, too late, too late!"

Rhett felt the imprint of the man's boot on his back. He kicked him forward, roughly, and Rhett was falling, falling into the grave, clawing at the darkness of an abyss that went on and on, forever and ever and ever…


	13. Chapter Thirteen

A/N: Sorry for the delay—we were hit by snow and had to postpone our Christmas plans and just got home. Here are the last 2 chapters, and Merry Christmas to all!

He was clawing at something. A shroud? It wrapped itself around and around him, muffling him, strangling him. Oh, God—to be dead and buried when his heart still beat in his chest!

It was the bedsheet. He was in his own bed, at the hotel. The long night was over. Outside his window the first faint flushes of dawn were touching the eastern sky.

Rhett launched himself from the bed and ran to the window.

He threw up the sash. The snow that had fallen in the night was new and white and clean. A negro boy in a cart was rumbling down the street.

"You, there!" Rhett called to the boy. "What day is this?"

The boy tilted back his cap and looked up at Rhett in surprise. Far away there were bells clamoring on the wind from a distant steeple.

"What day's today?" the boy said, incredulously. "Why, suh—today—it's Christmas."

He dressed himself with trembling hands. He did not care how his hair looked, or if his cravat was neatly straightened. He smoothed his hair with his hands as he flew down the stairs, to the hotel lobby.

"Good morning, Mr. Butler," said the clerk officiously. Normally Rhett would have whirled on him, and said something cutting, but today he could not do it. Not today—not _today_!

"Merry Christmas, my boy!" he cried, and tossed a gold coin to the thin hands. It felt so good, he tossed another.

"That couple that had my room last night when I came in," he remembered. "The honeymooners. Where did you put them?"

The clerk pulled a face but said, "They're well-put up, sir. They were happy to take the accommodation we offered them in the servants' quarters."

"Put them back in their proper place," Rhett said. "And move my things to the servant's quarters—I'll come and collect them later. And for God's sake, offer them a free breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, and whatever else they want for their troubles. Put it on my account."

The clerk looked alarmed. "But whom should I say is paying for all of it? They do not know you, sir."

Rhett grinned. "Tell them it's Santa Claus."

Out on the street he breathed deeply of the sharp, fresh air. He had forgotten his coat but he did not feel the cold. The sun was shining brightly, and across the street was Rene Picard, driving his mother-in-law's pie wagon on morning rounds. Rhett remembered once that Rene had said the holidays were a busy time for the pie industry. He had pitied the man, then, but now he was only glad to see the Zouave's little monkey-like face. Not _so_ monkey-like. Rhett had never liked him, especially, but now he thought that there was something brave in Rene Picard, something noble, even, and he admired him. Yes, admired him!

"Merry Christmas, Rene!" Rhett called, raising a hand in greeting.

The Zouave was so stunned that he dropped his reins.

"Merry—Christmas—Rhett," he was finally able to murmur back. He completed his rounds that morning and went back to breakfast to tell his family that he had seen Rhett Butler, completely drunk, on the street. "But by God," Rene would tell them, "If that's how he's going to act, drunk, I'll buy the round myself! Such a change in him! Such—_humanity_."

A little farther on, Rhett passed Dr. and Mrs. Meade, coming home from the early service at the church. Mrs. Meade was prepared to be snubbed, after her interaction with Butler the day before. So she nearly lost her footing on the icy sidewalk as Rhett tipped his hat to her, and had to clutch her husband's arm when he stopped to wish them a happy Yule with a smile that split his dark face in genuine good humor.

"I'm glad I caught you," said Rhett, seriously, to Mrs. Meade, _taking her hand_ in earnestness, "Because I've been thinking I'd like to make a donation to the Fund for the Widows and Orphans. That graveyard is a nasty place—there's no cheer about it, at all. If we could set out an allee of trees, a little bench, a water feature and clear away the weeds, it wouldn't be half so forbidding as it is. I'd like to pay for it all. In fact, I'll write you a check right now." He pulled his billfold from his pocket and did just that thing, adding so many zeroes on the sum to be paid that _both_ Meades felt a little faint.

"When were you at the graveyard?" Mrs. Meade asked, through disbelieving lips, for it was well-known Butler never went there.

"Oh, last night late," Rhett said cheerfully, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be out at a graveyard at midnight on Christmas Eve. "Grimmest place I've ever been. Merry Christmas, you folks! You will stop by the house on Peachtree street later, if you get a chance, won't you? Scarlett and I will be at home to our friends all evening."

Now even Dr. Meade's jaw hung down. Here was Rhett Butler, freely offering to give away his hard-earned money, talking of the wife he had abandoned a year ago as though he had not abandoned her, and calling these people he had made no bones about detesting _his friends. _As they hurried away from Butler, who was calling over his shoulder good wishes to them, Dr. Meade said, in a low voice to his wife,

"Don't look at him—he's playing a game with us—or else dead drunk."

"Dead drunk!" his wife exclaimed. "Oh, Dr. Meade, he's had a stroke or apoplexy of some kind. I wonder at you for not noticing. The poor man—it's plain as day. We should go and _help_ him."

"I never heard of a stroke making somebody nice," Dr. Meade said doubtfully.

"Well, I never heard of liquor making Rhett Butler nice," retorted his wife. "Oh! I wonder if he mean what he said about the cemetery. Dr. Meade, we're going right down to Henry Hamilton this minute and getting him to cash the check before Butler comes to his senses and changes his mind. I don't care if it _is _Christmas—we're going!"

Rhett was not there to overhear this conversation. He had sprinted down the street toward a row of shops. They were not open, and he felt a little pang of sorrow for pounding on the door, waking the owners. But he had to get presents—he must—and he would compensate them for their troubles.

In the Toy Emporium he picked presents for the children. A beautiful carved rocking horse for Ella—she had always wanted a pony when Bonnie had had one, but Rhett had never troubled himself over Scarlett's child. But how sweet Ella had been over Bonnie having one—not jealous at all. Full of congratulatory spirit. She was a good child—he would get her a pony in the new year, teach her to ride, but carefully. For Wade he chose a small set of target pistols. He would take the boy to Tara, in the spring, show him how to shoot—Tara! Why, he'd get some little geegaws for Sister Sue's brood, and have them sent. And something for Beau Wilkes—the toy store was not the place—but in the bookstore, adjacent, he found a set of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, in handsome crimson leather. Rhett bought all twelve volumes, and then his head was turned by a set of Macaulay's _History of England_. He snapped it up, too—he remembered once, years ago, Ashley Wilkes saying that he had read it and enjoyed it, and had it lost when Twelve Oaks burned in the war.

For Scarlett, Rhett could not fathom what to get. There was a jewelry store next to the book store, and the jeweler opened up and showed him row after row of gleaming baubles. But none of them seemed the thing. He had always placated Scarlett with gems before, and he did not want to do it now. He wanted something to show her how he felt, truly. He ground his teeth in frustration. There was nothing here. Only a few pretty bolts of silk, in the corner, some kid gloves and a selection of hats…

Hats! In the middle there was a green silk hat. It was not the same as the French bonnet he had gotten her during the war—it was a fanchon-style, and the color was more of a spring green than an emerald. But there _were_ ostrich feathers curling about the brim, and wide silk ribbons to tie under the chin. It was somewhat cheaply made, nothing compared to the Paris hat that Rhett had given her, once, but he bought this hat not for Scarlett's true delight in it, but as a sign, as a gesture. He was going back with her to the beginning of their time together. He was going to do everything right, this time.

The clerk boxed things up, and Rhett gave him double what it cost, to compensate for the trouble of opening on Christmas. Then, remembering something, he asked the clerk to hand him some bolts of warm fabric. "I'll take it now," he said. "Have the rest sent to this address on Peachtree street."

Where were they? He thought, as he retraced his steps from last night. Where had he seen the woman with the small child? He stopped for a cup of coffee at a restaurant, and had the waiter box up some food. He went back out into the glittering cold. What a strange sight he must look, carrying a box on top of a bolt of fabric, asking passers-by if they had happened to see, or know of, a young woman with a baby looking for accommodation. Nobody had seen her and Rhett followed his steps back to the doorway in which they had been huddled the night before. But surely they couldn't still be there? Surely _someone_ must have taken them in?

They were there, mother and child, still wrapped up against the night's freeze in a ragged blanket. The woman sat up when she saw Rhett, and tears glinted in her eyes. He remembered with shame that last night he had suggested she was a prostitute. Shame filled his heart as he sat down on the wet stoop next to her.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "And I'm so sorry for what I said. The devil was in me, for a minute—but he's gone now. I've brought you some food, and some warm cloth, to make little things for the kid. Eat—eat. You must be frozen through. What is your name?"

"Hannah," said the girl, between bites.

"Hannah what?"

"Hannah DuPre."

But the DuPres were one of the best families in town—they ran the bank, were friends of Meades and Merriweathers! And this girl had said her mother had thrown her out. Why, he had met Frank DuPre's little girl once, years ago—_this_ girl, now, homeless and with a small child. He remembered some scandal about her eloping with an entirely unsuitable man—a servant or groom of some sort—well. Even if she had been the daughter of one of Belle Watling's girls he would not let her stay here. Not on _Christmas_!

But where could he take her? The hotel was full up. If only he had a friend in Atlanta—or a home, a real home—somebody, some place, to turn to!

Rhett hailed a hansom cab and helped Hannah and the baby in.

"Peachtree street," he told the driver.

"Captain—Butler!" said Ashley Wilkes, in astonishment, as he pulled open the door of the shabby house that Melanie Wilkes had loved so much. Rhett felt he could see her there, still. It was the thought of Melanie, her sweet face that seemed so close to him, that had made him turn to Ashley, to bring Hannah here. Melanie would have wanted it—Melanie would have welcome it. But Ashley only looked surprised as Rhett explained the situation.

"This is Hannah DuPre—yes, of those DuPres—and her little baby. They need a warm place to be for a while, a bath, some food—and some clothes, if you can scare them up."

Ashley's mouth worked. "Butler—but—is—is that _your_ child?"

Rhett grinned, and laughed outright. "Not on your life! Wilkes, I'm a blackguard, and but I like them with a bit more meat on their bones, and a little older than Ella. Though she's damned pretty, I'll admit."

"Yes, 'damned' pretty," echoed Ashley absently, darting a look over at the girl sitting stiffly on the faded settee. She flashed him a shy, self-conscious smile. Rhett saw Wilkes's resolve melt at once.

"She can stay as long as she likes, though I'll have to get Aunt Pitty to come over—as chaperon, you know. Butler, what I can't understand is, if that's not your child, why you care? Why you're doing this? It's—it's right decent of you."

Rhett saw the admiration in Ashley Wilkes' face, and for the second time that day, he felt ashamed. He had always ridiculed Ashley for being so proper, such a gentleman, and he had told himself that he did not want to be so meek, and docile, as that. But now he saw that meek and docile were not the words: kind, and generous, was what he had meant. And he had pretended not to be a gentleman not because he did not want to be one—but because he had not thought he would be able to live up to the code.

"I haven't always done the decent thing," Rhett admitted. "But I'd like to start now, Wilkes—if you'll forgive me for the things I've done."

Ashley smiled ruefully. "I wonder if you would want my forgiveness if you knew…well…if you knew what I was planning for tonight."

"That you plan on asking Scarlett to marry you?"

Ashley looked shocked. "How did you know?"

"It doesn't matter. Ask her if you like. I'm through with trying to make her unhappy. I love her—I'm going to ask her to have me back—but if she won't I'll go gently."

"She will have you back," Ashley promised him. "She loves you more than she ever thought she loved—" his good manners would not let him say baldly what he meant. "Well, more than she ever thought she loved anybody else."

Rhett grinned. He gave Ashley a roll of bills and told him to send for anything Miss DuPre or the little one might need. And then he went back out into the cold Christmas morning, looking wistfully at the monstrous house where even now, Scarlett must be waking up. But it was not time, yet. There was more he must do before he could go to her.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

"God's nightgown," said Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler as she closed the door behind the latest delivery man. All day the bell had been ringing as packages were delivered—toys of all shapes and sizes for the children, and now, the fixings for a full Christmas dinner that could feed an army: turkey, ham, vegetables, and a plump goose that might have been the _king_ of geese. "Take it into the kitchen," she told the servants, wondering if someone might be playing a joke on her.

"Probably one of the carpet-baggers, trying to get in my good graces," she muttered, as she went into the parlor, where Wade and Ella were playing with their toys. Scarlett had not seen any of her old friends in months, but every time she encountered them on the street they pretended that they were still close, greeting her exuberantly as she swept coldly by, her head raised. She had thought if Rhett could see her doing that—if he heard that she had changed—he might come back to her. But he hadn't heard—or if he had, he hadn't cared.

Her heart shrank in her chest as she thought back to the night before. Such bad, bad luck that Rhett should see her with Ashley! And of course he would misunderstand, and be angry. He had a right. She had been—well, if she had not committed adultery in the flesh, so to speak, she had committed in in spirit. Of course he _should_ be angry. But, she could not help thinking, he _might_ have given her a chance to explain!

"Mother, look at this!" Ella said, rocking on her horse. Wade was sighting one of his new pistols with a vase on the mantelpiece, looking pleased as punch. Scarlett did not feel anything like the Christmas spirit they were feeling, but she put on a good show. "Why, it's all so lovely, darling. I wish we knew who sent them."

"It was Uncle Rhett," Wade pronounced, and Scarlett felt her heart squeeze now for her son. After the way he had spoken to her last night, there was no doubt in Scarlett's mind that Rhett really didn't care about her—or the children—at all.

"Maybe they're from Santa Claus," she laughed.

The bell rang again, and Scarlett, throwing up her hands, went to answer it. "Oh, Ashley!" she cried, in dismay. _Stupid. I'm stupid. Of course it would be Ashley and Beau—I invited them for supper, didn't I?_ Behind Ashley stood a very pretty girl with curly fair hair—sweet and a little placid looking, but with depths of spirit that showed in her eyes.

"Scarlett, this is Miss Hannah DuPre," Ashley said. "She's a new friend—I hope you don't mind if she comes to supper today. Aunt Pitty couldn't spare a place at her table." The woman held a baby to her chest, but her other hand was tucked in the crook of Ashley's arm. Scarlett smiled, sensing the beginnings of an attraction between Ashley and this young woman. Why—it was almost palpable! Oh, she had thought when Ashley found someone it would hurt, for her sake or Melanie's, but it didn't. This girl even reminded her of Melly, a little.

"I'm glad to meet you," Scarlett told her. "Come in—come in. Beau, you're looking well. Better than usual."

"He's pleased as punch over that bunch of books that you sent him for a Christmas present, Scarlett."

"Books! Great balls of fire, Ashley—I got him a bearskin cap. You know I don't truck with books unless they're Waverly novels."

"Well, if you didn't send them, who did?"

"Maybe the person who got me my pony!" cried Ella. "Maybe Santa Claus?"

The grownups laughed and Ashley caught Scarlett's hand. "And Dr. Meade came by after breakfast to tell me that you've paid him in advance for any medicine Beau might need this winter. I can't thank you enough, Scarlett."

Scarlett had a very strange feeling. "Ashley," she said. "I did no such _thing_, but I would, of course..."

Ashley did not believe her. He only laughed, and handed Scarlett a wrapped box. "Merry Christmas, dear," he said, pecking her cheek.

Scarlett gave Ashley his own present, which she retrieved from the library—a gold silk tie that reminded her of the sash she had given him during the war. She opened Ashley's present to her, in a velvet jewel box, with a moment's hesitation. Suppose it was—oh! But it was only a pretty little hair ornament Melly had used to wear, in the old days. For a moment she had thought it would be—but of course that was stupid!

"Thank you, Ashley," she said. "This is just the thing I wanted to remember Melly by." She arranged the ornament against her hair.

Wade had gotten her perfume, and Ella had embroidered her a plethora of handkerchiefs, and Scarlett, with a meaningful nod of her head, directed Ella to give one of the parcels to Miss DuPre, so she would not be left out. She kissed her children, and was just sitting back down when Wade cried,

"Mother, there's something else here for you," and handed her a hatbox.

"Who is it from, Wade honey?"

"There's no card," Wade said. "But it came earlier, with everything else."

Scarlett picked at the string, and opened the box. Nestled inside a wreath of tissue, was a sweet green hat! Oh, it was a little shabby—but it put her in mind of another hat somebody had given her once. _Could Rhett have sent it—and all these other things? _But she quashed that hope before it could take root in her heart. If Rhett had sent these things, these lovely things, wouldn't he be here himself?

_Likely they were meant for someone else and sent here by mistake_, she sighed inwardly, but she would not ruin her children's fun. "Let's go into the dining room," she said, and stood, and led the way.

She had set an extra place, in the hope against hope that Rhett would come. But now Miss DuPre sat there. He wasn't coming. That was plain! _Accept it, Scarlett. _The soup course was served, but while they ate, Scarlett could not accept the bald truth of Rhett's absence. She kept looking toward the door. She could not stop herself.

Everyone knew whom she hoped for. Ella murmured into her bowl, "I miss Uncle Rhett." Wade, seated to her left, covered Scarlett's hand gently with his own.

"He's not coming, Mother. I'm sorry, darling."

Ashley, picking up on Scarlett's despair, began praising the meal, the decorations, everything. _He's a good man_, Scarlett thought, at his attempts to cheer her. _Miss DuPre will be lucky to have him—for she will, I know she will_, _in the end. If only I had someone, too…my own true love_.

"That reminds me," Ashley went on, "I didn't tell you how Hannah and I met, Scarlett. It was the strangest thing. Butler came by this morning…"

So Rhett was still in Atlanta—had been here, on Peachtree street, and had not stopped by? Scarlett dropped her spoon into her bowl and buried her head in her hands. He didn't care—he didn't—not anymore.

"Oh, stop!" she cried, to Ashley. "Don't mention him. I—I can't bear it."

Silence in the room—a great, sweeping silence. Scarlett heard the ticking of the clock, the whisper of embers in the hearth, the sound of sleigh bells outside. Voices calling—a great, booming voice—and the sound of boots on the steps outside. The bell rang, startling them all. They looked up.

"Who can it be?"

"I don't know—go and see, Wade."

"No," Ashley held the boy back, understanding dawning. "You go, Scarlett. I'm sure it's for you."

She sighed, and threw her napkin down and trudged through the dining room into the hall. "I've got it, Teena," she told the maid, and with superhuman effort, she pulled the door open, and—and—!

She had dreamed of this moment so many times. The moment when the mist finally cleared, and she saw him here, before her. But this was not a dream—was it?—no, no. _This was real_.

"Merry Christmas, Scarlett," Rhett said and she trembled from head to foot with newfound joy.

"Rhett!" she threw herself into his arms, scarcely daring to think first whether he would recoil. She only knew that she _must_ do it. But surprise of surprises!—his arms went around her, tight. He lowered his lips to her hair, and then her lips. His moustache tickled—how she had missed it! She laughed, despite the tears that were rolling down her cheeks.

"You're so handsome," she cried, when she got a look at him, quite without meaning to say anything of the sort. But Rhett _did_ look handsome—in his best suit, with his hair neat and his moustache trimmed. He looked better than he had in ages. He grinned—that old grin, with spirit in it.

"I wanted to come to you as a bridegroom, as they say in the old text," he said. "I couldn't find a man to give me a shave and so I had to do it myself, for once. That explains why I'm so late. I hope you'll forgive me, Scarlett."

"Forgive _you_! Why, I should be lucky you're even speaking to me."

"No, darling." He put his finger to her lips to quiet her. "Scarlett, you apologized to me once, and I told you that I wouldn't hear it. Now it is my turn, but I hope you'll be more understanding than I. I love you, sweetheart, and I'm sorry. I didn't understand what things were like for you. I was only thinking of myself. Well—things will be different, from now on."

"Oh, Rhett—do you mean it? And you're home—home for good?"

"Yes, I mean it—and yes, back for good—if you will have me."

She did not need to tell him her answer. Her eyes said it all. They kissed again. But they had had their moment—Ashley could not restrain the children any longer. "Uncle Rhett!" Ella cried, launching herself at the man and woman who clung together in the foyer. Even Wade forgot that he was mostly grownup, and threw his arms around his step-father.

"What are you doing here, Uncle Rhett?"

"Can't a man be with his family on Christmas Day? It's the only place he can be. Did you ragamuffins get the presents I sent? Ella, I spoke to a man today at the hotel about a pony for you—how would you like that? Wade, what a handsome boy you've got to be! Ashley, good to see you and Miss DuPre again—little Beau, how did you like your history books? Scarlett—where are you going?"

For Scarlett had run back into the parlor. She appeared, a few seconds later, laughing, with the hatbox in her hands.

"I'm going to break etiquette and wear this hat through the meal," she giggled. "You put it on me, Rhett—tie the ribbons under my chin like you did, once before."

He tied them, his hands trembling with emotion, and his eyes full of things he could not say.

"A toast," said Ashley, to break the silence. He poured champagne chilling on the sideboard into glasses, and passed them around, even to the children. "To the return of old friends—and to new friends," putting his arm around Miss DuPre.

"To new love—and to old love, too," Scarlett said, looking at them, and then at Rhett.

"To family," murmured Miss DuPre with a smile down at the baby in her arms.

Rhett said, with his arm around Scarlett: "Hear, hear."

"To presents!" cried Wade.

"And ponies!" cried Ella.

But it was little Beau Wilkes who stole the show, who said just the right thing, to fill their eyes with happy tears. He stood up on his chair, and lifted his glass, and looked down on the happy faces around him.

"Merry Christmas!" he piped in his thin voice, his eyes bright, holding his glass aloft so that it caught and held the light. "And God bless us, every one!"


End file.
